This was not the intention to write as I am doing, to write anything that is, because he plan was to experience a participation show at the Playhouse and then stay for the after show talk of Our Friends in the North, but there is no regret for the loss of the investment of £5 in the ticket because I have been moved, reminded of my former self, angered tempered by understanding of the nature of Government and in particular the task now facing the people of China
I do not think the programme I came upon by chance was setting out to be unfair or could have scripted the moving plight of one couple whose child had been stolen from them to be sold to couples only willing to buy, some 70000 children estimated to have this fate.
This is the problem the population of China was growing exponentially as peasants produced more children than could be supported under the prevailing economic system. The government enacted a policy of restricted marriage to twenty years olds, 20 for girls and 22 for young men and then provided a permit to produce one child. Harsh but understandable as an expedient to cope with the problem of too many children dying during infancy because malnutrition and disease. The added complication is the traditional Chinese approach, which no doubt will be applauded by the many who oppose the role of the state in providing social care, that children should care for their parents when they get old and cannot work. The complication from the old child policy is that boys carrying on the line and look after their parents while girls become part of the family they marry into and look after their parents in law. This means a vast number of families who do not have sons to care for them
The consequence male babies and young male children are stolen and sold to desperate couples without a son. Because of the one child policy, couple commenced to have scans to determine the sex of their child and abort females even in the fifth month. The consequence of this is a national shortage of wives and there are estimated to be 40 million men with no hope of finding a wife. This leads to young women being stolen to become sex slaves, or slave bearers of children.
If a girl baby is not aborted she used to be given away but now can command a black market price. Another related problem is the number of children of both sexes born secretly because the couple are not old enough to marry or already have one child. It is possible to have more than one child or keep the child if is born with out a conception permit, but you have to pay fines and the programme mentioned one town although its size was not given, or if it was. I was not paying attention where the total of fines provided major income, although the programme implied this went into individual pockets rather than for community benefit.
The film concentrated on a number of moving individual situations whose predicaments caused me anger and tears as well as fearing for the individual futures because citizens are forbidden to talk about the problems outside of the country and have left themselves open to further fines, fines which were said to take five years to pay.
The main focus of the film was one couple where the child was born in secret in a farm building (here I have heard that story before) and who had then to abandon the child with its grandmother (Moses?) but who could not bear the loss, owned up, and over five years paid the fine. Father and grandfather had become two of the 150 million mainly men who had moved to the cities and towns for work, living bachelor lives in cramped environments, although fair's fair, nothing like the squalor and degradation which the peasants experienced when they moved to the cities during the industrial revolution in Great Britain, although one suspects they were and are still better off in terms of earnings which are then sent home (now what is all this fuss we make about economic migrants?) I mean both those willing to pay their taxes for a few comparatively small amounts of surplus income and not the non doms ) (those who are not legally domiciled in the UK by choice because this means they can avoid taxation) now estimated to be 115000 but where only a number in the tens of thousands earn enough to make a special annual tax sum worthwhile.
This carefully selected couple and chosen to be the TV guinea pigs for an ex police detective to try and find their son. The task of the detective is enormous although he claimed to have rescued 100 children. There is a suspect a neighbour who is reported to have admitted the that he stole the child for selling on after offering to take the child back to its mother then living with the grandmother who was looking after the boy while she sold goods from her small holding at the market. This neighbour then claimed to have left the boy outside his home and that another neighbour had seen the child playing happily eating an ice cream, letting the neighbour off the hook. At the end of the programme it is revealed that both the male neighbour and the female witness had disappeared from the local community. The grief of the parents and grand mother was unbearable because everything that was emerging in this programme suggested their child would not be recovered. It was no consolation that parents and children were being reunited 20 years and this throw away comment revealed how long the problem had existed. They had not recovered their child as the programme ended and the private detective admitted he had no leads.
One development revealed in the film had a small personal significance. The couple were investing money they could not afford in having their child's picture and details published as one child in a pack 52 playing cards. In 2003 the circulation by the US administration of the Most Wanted pack of playing cards in relation to Iraq lead me to developed the concept of my work cards, in A 4 size and in packs or sets of 24, although with artman and signature cards there are 52 cards in every 2 sets! Trivial given the nature of the human tragedy and suffering revealed in the programme.
Another story of similar plight was that of a young couple too old to marry and attempting to have their child in secret but where the both had to take place in hospital because of complications. They were forced to sell the child to pay the consequent fine. The mother came over as courageous and pleading for a solution where she was able to keep the child. I do not understand how those making the programme were not prepared to fund this individual case. The failure to do so undermined any moral authority which the programme set out to achieve. I have to day that while I would not have known about this situation without the programme I have major questions about the implications for the victims shown in the programme.
There was little sympathy for one trafficker who admitted he had sold his own child in the past and now traded in order to keep his one son. He was shown buying a one year boy for a childless couple. He paid the mother 9000 in currency while collection 12000 from the couple. He put the blame on the system. The woman who sold the boy admitted this was her third child.
The film was shot in secret, pretending to be tourists moving hotels every few days and constantly changing mobile phone cards. One throw away comment by the detective suggested it was not just the authorities who could get easy access to phone records.
At one level the film struck me as a cross between the worst aspects of Brave New World, 1984 and Nazi social engineering and human biological experimentation to produce a race of perfect Aryan children.
The programme, no doubt in an effort to appease the authorities from taking retaliatory action, issued a statement from the Chinese government complaining that there was no scientific basis for the assertion that the one child policy was the cause of the problem covered in the film, paying out that nations without the policy also had the same problem, something which I thought the programme was misguided in emphasising. A story about the trade and plight of families would have made the point without going into the sensitive political arena. Think how sensitive we and the Americans become when foreigners criticise things where internally there is even greater controversy. Interestingly though the statement indicated that the one child per couple policy was to be reviewed but not before 2010 and after the Olympic games.
I spent to today, or yesterday as it now attending to paperwork and therefore missed Prime Minister Question time where it sound the opposition gave the PM a justified roasting, After a great start he messed up grand style and I bet Tony and Cheri would be laughing were it not that he has thrown away a great position for the Labour Party. In one major respect this is worse than the Iraq war because there was a higher purpose where as this was a pure unadulterated piece of political party gamesmanship that went wrong and which anyone with the slightest knowledge of the public could have predicted. He could either have said OK I am a new PM which a new approach which I will put immediately before the electorate and we be the judge. He might not have won but it was a position which matched the gravitas and moral authority he had successfully portrayed when confronted with a series of crisis this summer. His statement on Iraq to Parliament also fell short of admitting that he had made the initial statement after his visit because he planned to call an election and anted to make the visit before going to the polls where Iraq and our continuing involvement would be an issue.
The Autumn financial statement again brought forward fared little better. His is a tax raising mini budget aimed to finance what are popular measures some traditional goodies for Labour supporters, i.e. more for education and health than previously planned and some which appealed to the public when proposed by the opposition, and with the taxes coming from the rich and from business, which also appeals to traditional Labour supporters and the trade unions. All that has happened over the past three days is that the hole which he dug by first contemplating an election and then backing out has got deeper and deeper. This has been party political behaviour at its worst, cynical and morally bankrupt and such behaviour tends to reap its own reward by entering the halls of political infamy such as Appeasement and the Poll tax. That you did not understand that being Prime Minister means you put the country before political party worries me greatly. You have doomed yourself to one term Gordon and you will need a series of miracles to recover.
Suddenly the media has left events in Burma and quickly as it focussed attention. There are reports of Monks disappearing in the night and the burning of bodies, now how often has that happened before during my lifetime? The media is quick to devote attention to was appears to be a worthwhile cause, fuel it, give hope and encouragement. There may be good reasons for now moving on to other things.
I need to be convinced that this is so.
The media machine is still working hard for the parents of Madeleine but oh I wish that a fraction of what is being spent by their advisers and supporters was going on all the other children who have disappeared at the hands of men, and some women for reasons which are not in their best interests.
I do not think the programme I came upon by chance was setting out to be unfair or could have scripted the moving plight of one couple whose child had been stolen from them to be sold to couples only willing to buy, some 70000 children estimated to have this fate.
This is the problem the population of China was growing exponentially as peasants produced more children than could be supported under the prevailing economic system. The government enacted a policy of restricted marriage to twenty years olds, 20 for girls and 22 for young men and then provided a permit to produce one child. Harsh but understandable as an expedient to cope with the problem of too many children dying during infancy because malnutrition and disease. The added complication is the traditional Chinese approach, which no doubt will be applauded by the many who oppose the role of the state in providing social care, that children should care for their parents when they get old and cannot work. The complication from the old child policy is that boys carrying on the line and look after their parents while girls become part of the family they marry into and look after their parents in law. This means a vast number of families who do not have sons to care for them
The consequence male babies and young male children are stolen and sold to desperate couples without a son. Because of the one child policy, couple commenced to have scans to determine the sex of their child and abort females even in the fifth month. The consequence of this is a national shortage of wives and there are estimated to be 40 million men with no hope of finding a wife. This leads to young women being stolen to become sex slaves, or slave bearers of children.
If a girl baby is not aborted she used to be given away but now can command a black market price. Another related problem is the number of children of both sexes born secretly because the couple are not old enough to marry or already have one child. It is possible to have more than one child or keep the child if is born with out a conception permit, but you have to pay fines and the programme mentioned one town although its size was not given, or if it was. I was not paying attention where the total of fines provided major income, although the programme implied this went into individual pockets rather than for community benefit.
The film concentrated on a number of moving individual situations whose predicaments caused me anger and tears as well as fearing for the individual futures because citizens are forbidden to talk about the problems outside of the country and have left themselves open to further fines, fines which were said to take five years to pay.
The main focus of the film was one couple where the child was born in secret in a farm building (here I have heard that story before) and who had then to abandon the child with its grandmother (Moses?) but who could not bear the loss, owned up, and over five years paid the fine. Father and grandfather had become two of the 150 million mainly men who had moved to the cities and towns for work, living bachelor lives in cramped environments, although fair's fair, nothing like the squalor and degradation which the peasants experienced when they moved to the cities during the industrial revolution in Great Britain, although one suspects they were and are still better off in terms of earnings which are then sent home (now what is all this fuss we make about economic migrants?) I mean both those willing to pay their taxes for a few comparatively small amounts of surplus income and not the non doms ) (those who are not legally domiciled in the UK by choice because this means they can avoid taxation) now estimated to be 115000 but where only a number in the tens of thousands earn enough to make a special annual tax sum worthwhile.
This carefully selected couple and chosen to be the TV guinea pigs for an ex police detective to try and find their son. The task of the detective is enormous although he claimed to have rescued 100 children. There is a suspect a neighbour who is reported to have admitted the that he stole the child for selling on after offering to take the child back to its mother then living with the grandmother who was looking after the boy while she sold goods from her small holding at the market. This neighbour then claimed to have left the boy outside his home and that another neighbour had seen the child playing happily eating an ice cream, letting the neighbour off the hook. At the end of the programme it is revealed that both the male neighbour and the female witness had disappeared from the local community. The grief of the parents and grand mother was unbearable because everything that was emerging in this programme suggested their child would not be recovered. It was no consolation that parents and children were being reunited 20 years and this throw away comment revealed how long the problem had existed. They had not recovered their child as the programme ended and the private detective admitted he had no leads.
One development revealed in the film had a small personal significance. The couple were investing money they could not afford in having their child's picture and details published as one child in a pack 52 playing cards. In 2003 the circulation by the US administration of the Most Wanted pack of playing cards in relation to Iraq lead me to developed the concept of my work cards, in A 4 size and in packs or sets of 24, although with artman and signature cards there are 52 cards in every 2 sets! Trivial given the nature of the human tragedy and suffering revealed in the programme.
Another story of similar plight was that of a young couple too old to marry and attempting to have their child in secret but where the both had to take place in hospital because of complications. They were forced to sell the child to pay the consequent fine. The mother came over as courageous and pleading for a solution where she was able to keep the child. I do not understand how those making the programme were not prepared to fund this individual case. The failure to do so undermined any moral authority which the programme set out to achieve. I have to day that while I would not have known about this situation without the programme I have major questions about the implications for the victims shown in the programme.
There was little sympathy for one trafficker who admitted he had sold his own child in the past and now traded in order to keep his one son. He was shown buying a one year boy for a childless couple. He paid the mother 9000 in currency while collection 12000 from the couple. He put the blame on the system. The woman who sold the boy admitted this was her third child.
The film was shot in secret, pretending to be tourists moving hotels every few days and constantly changing mobile phone cards. One throw away comment by the detective suggested it was not just the authorities who could get easy access to phone records.
At one level the film struck me as a cross between the worst aspects of Brave New World, 1984 and Nazi social engineering and human biological experimentation to produce a race of perfect Aryan children.
The programme, no doubt in an effort to appease the authorities from taking retaliatory action, issued a statement from the Chinese government complaining that there was no scientific basis for the assertion that the one child policy was the cause of the problem covered in the film, paying out that nations without the policy also had the same problem, something which I thought the programme was misguided in emphasising. A story about the trade and plight of families would have made the point without going into the sensitive political arena. Think how sensitive we and the Americans become when foreigners criticise things where internally there is even greater controversy. Interestingly though the statement indicated that the one child per couple policy was to be reviewed but not before 2010 and after the Olympic games.
I spent to today, or yesterday as it now attending to paperwork and therefore missed Prime Minister Question time where it sound the opposition gave the PM a justified roasting, After a great start he messed up grand style and I bet Tony and Cheri would be laughing were it not that he has thrown away a great position for the Labour Party. In one major respect this is worse than the Iraq war because there was a higher purpose where as this was a pure unadulterated piece of political party gamesmanship that went wrong and which anyone with the slightest knowledge of the public could have predicted. He could either have said OK I am a new PM which a new approach which I will put immediately before the electorate and we be the judge. He might not have won but it was a position which matched the gravitas and moral authority he had successfully portrayed when confronted with a series of crisis this summer. His statement on Iraq to Parliament also fell short of admitting that he had made the initial statement after his visit because he planned to call an election and anted to make the visit before going to the polls where Iraq and our continuing involvement would be an issue.
The Autumn financial statement again brought forward fared little better. His is a tax raising mini budget aimed to finance what are popular measures some traditional goodies for Labour supporters, i.e. more for education and health than previously planned and some which appealed to the public when proposed by the opposition, and with the taxes coming from the rich and from business, which also appeals to traditional Labour supporters and the trade unions. All that has happened over the past three days is that the hole which he dug by first contemplating an election and then backing out has got deeper and deeper. This has been party political behaviour at its worst, cynical and morally bankrupt and such behaviour tends to reap its own reward by entering the halls of political infamy such as Appeasement and the Poll tax. That you did not understand that being Prime Minister means you put the country before political party worries me greatly. You have doomed yourself to one term Gordon and you will need a series of miracles to recover.
Suddenly the media has left events in Burma and quickly as it focussed attention. There are reports of Monks disappearing in the night and the burning of bodies, now how often has that happened before during my lifetime? The media is quick to devote attention to was appears to be a worthwhile cause, fuel it, give hope and encouragement. There may be good reasons for now moving on to other things.
I need to be convinced that this is so.
The media machine is still working hard for the parents of Madeleine but oh I wish that a fraction of what is being spent by their advisers and supporters was going on all the other children who have disappeared at the hands of men, and some women for reasons which are not in their best interests.
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