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Jun 9 28 tweets 8 min read
#THREAD

So grotesque hard-right ideologue & Tory darling Katharine Birbalsingh is finally giving her first speech as the Govt's Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, having been appointed in October 2021 - to the hard-right Policy Exchange think tank.

mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
In her speech Birbalsingh will say that success is often too narrowly defined as stories of people rising from humble backgrounds to elite jobs & will call for more focus on smaller steps up the ladder, such as 'the children of unemployed parents getting stable work'.
I'm sure you remember the Govt's controversial whitewash report of the Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities, written largely by hand-picked culture war ideologues & given a brief to play down both structural/systemic & institutional racism in Britain.

Birbalsingh is just another brazenly shameless appointment, charged with getting her & the Govt's increasingly absurd & extremist ideology widely disseminated, in part by producing a partisan whitewash report - like the Race Commission Report - designed to fuel the culture war.
We already know the Social Mobility Report will read like every Mail editorial: structural inequalities don't exist, individual moral failings do; popular culture is a moral vacuum; single parents are a problem; we need tougher policing, & more discipline in stricter schools.
The Social Mobility Report will just be another re-run of the Race Report: an exercise in 'flooding the zone with shit' - a mechanism for fuelling the divisive culture war & generating 'anti-woke' headlines which will frame issues on the terms of Britain's free-market/hard-right.
Imho, Birbalsingh's goals as Social Mobility Tsar - which will be reflected in her speech - are threefold:

to stoke a divisive culture war;

to reduce expectations for poorer kids;

to claim poverty is the result of individual moral failings, rather than structural inequalities.
After 12 years of Tory misrule & forty years of neoliberal policies positioning selfish individualism as being somehow moral, UK social mobility is in a dire state - compared to other countries, the UK is clearly a 'low mobility/high inequality' society.

So how did a strict headmistress from an academy school get to be the Government's Social Mobility Tsar?

Birbalsigh was born in New Zealand and raised in Canada until she was 15 when her dad began lecturing at the University of Warwick.
After attending New College, Oxford, she went into teaching at state schools in south London, & in 2007 began hosting a controversial blog, To Miss with Love, under the moniker Miss Snuffy.

It's clear Birbalsingh has sought fame, power & the limelight for well over a decade.
In April 2009, her book "Singleholic" was published. The back cover states: "White men, black men, brown men... Who's better to marry? And who's better in bed? Have you ever wondered who has the biggest packet?"

theguardian.com/education/2011…
However, it wasn't her writing that made her (in)famous: Birbalsingh came to national prominence in October 2010 after criticising the British education system at that year's Conservative Party conference, and speaking in support of the party's education policies.
Birbalsingh ranted about a "culture of excuses, of low standards... a sea of bureaucracy... My experience of teaching for over a decade in five different schools has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the system is broken, because it keeps poor children poor."
After the speech Birbalsingh was asked not to attend the school at which she taught while the governors "discuss[ed] her position". She subsequently resigned "after being asked to comply with conditions that she did not feel able to comply with".
To cut a long story short, Birbalsingh received Government support to open her own school, & having previously tried to open the Michaela Community School (MCS) in Wandsworth, the academy school finally launched in Wembley Park, Brent, in 2014.

independent.co.uk/news/education…
Fast forward to January 2021, & Birbalsingh spoke at a debate hosted by the free market Henry Jackson Society, where she asserted her opposition to what she described as the growth of "woke culture" in education. By October, she was Social Mobility Tsar.

henryjacksonsociety.org/members-conten…
I've written at length in this #thread about how controversial, ideological, & sometimes dangerously irresponsible many of Breitbart, Telegraph, Tufton St & GB "News" favourite Birbalsingh's ideas & practices are as head teacher at Michaela school.

Basically, living embodiment of the Mail Birbalsingh believes everyone should STFU about poverty, inequality & racism.

I want to finish this thread with some information about the place where she's giving her first speech as Social Mobility Tsar: the Policy Exchange think tank.
Controversial ultra-free-market think tank Policy Exchange was set up in 2002 by a group including Nicholas Boles, Michael Gove & Francis Maude. It is one of the three least transparent think tanks in terms of funding - but we know US Libertarian billionaires are supporters.
More appropriately termed a lobby group funded by dark money, it is the group that Boris Johnson’s government uses most.

Policy Exchange has played an important role in shifting power away from rival institutions and into the prime minister’s office.
As @GeorgeMonbiot revealed last year, for several years Policy Exchange has been building a case for curtailing the judiciary, providing ammunition for the Govt’s attack on judicial review, which enables citizens to sue the government to uphold the law.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Policy Exchange has called for the PM's office to have even greater powers “to develop & direct policy change” through the civil service, & to appoint leaders of public bodies whose “culture & values” align with government’s aims - hence Birbalsingh's appointment.
In 2020, Policy Exchange published a polemic claiming Extinction Rebellion is led by dangerous extremists. As usual, it was widely covered by the media. It's how it works: opaquely funded free-market organisations dominate the UK news media, & rarely are voters given any context.
Less discussed was that Policy Exchange received funding from the power company Drax, the trade association Energy UK, & the gas companies E.ON & Cadent, whose fossil-fuel investments are threatened by environmental activism.
David Frost of Irish border fiasco fame was a member of the Advisory Council of the eurosceptic think tank Open Europe, which merged with the free-market fundamentalist Policy Exchange think tank in 2020. But the public are oblivious to these networks.

#DowningStreetParty attendee Henry Newman, a close friend of Boris Johnson's wife, Carrie Symonds, was Toby Young's "role model", & was director of think tank Open Europe before it merged with Policy Exchange. Toby Young encouraged & helped Birbalsingh to set up Michaela school.
Finally, I'd never heard of Boris Johnson's senior advisor & one of Carrie Symond's "favourite people" Henry Newman, but last year I started exploring Fraser Nelson's & Andrew Neil's connections to the antidemocratic Orbán regime, & 'it's a small world'...
#THREAD on Katharine Birbalsingh's first speech since becoming the Government's Social Mobility Tsar - predictably delivered to the dodgy opaquely funded free-market lobbying group Policy Exchange, which pushes free-market/libertarian-right ideology:

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More from @docrussjackson

Jun 10
#THREAD

In 2020, the independent Sweden-based 'Varieties of Democracy Institute' ranked #Rwanda 150th out of 179 countries on its Index of Liberal Democracy - it's clearly #authoritarian. 🤬

But UK Govt Social mobility Tsar Birbalsingh says it's "lovely"! 😬

So who's right? 🤔 Image
This article by Alexander Dukalskis, an expert on authoritarian states & international human rights, is about the multiple ways that authoritarian states – countries where the leadership maintains power by non-democratic means – manage their image abroad.

theconversation.com/how-authoritar…
To manage their image abroad, authoritarian states like #Rwanda try to advance a favourable narrative about themselves.

They do things like hire PR firms to produce positive content, disseminate #propaganda, & cultivate friendly foreigners who can speak on their behalf. 😬 Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 10
#THREAD

Under the Tories, the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals has risen again, & now stands at 22.5%.

Nearly 2 MILLION schoolchildren in English schools were eligible for free school meals at the start of this year, government data shows.

#SunlitUplands Image
22.5% of pupils in English schools were eligible for free school meals (FSM) in January - an increase of 160,000 on last year's figure - described as "shocking" by headteachers' leaders.

This thread is based on this article:

tes.com/magazine/news/…
School leaders' Unions warned that these pupils' circumstances could become even "more severe" due to the #CostOfLivingCrisis & called for additional funding "for both educational & pastoral support".

No doubt the Mail & Tory MPs will ramp up their anti-union rhetoric, as usual. ImageImage
Read 16 tweets
Jun 9
#ThoughtForTheDay

Bonuses in the financial & insurance sector have hit a record high, growing by 27.9% over the last year, while average wages in the same period grew by just 4.2% - nearly £6BILLION was paid out in City bonuses in March alone.

#LevellingUp #CostOfLivingCrisis Image
“There is no justification for such obscene City bonuses at the best of times – let alone during a #CostOfLivingCrisis. While City executives rake it in, millions are struggling to keep their heads above water.” - Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary.

theguardian.com/business/2022/…
“Working people are at breaking point, having been left badly exposed to soaring bills after a decade of standstill wages & universal credit cuts. Ministers have no hesitation in calling for public sector pay restraint, but turn a blind eye to shocking City excess.”

#JoinaUnion Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 9
#THREAD on right-wing culture war crank Katharine Birbalsingh's first speech since becoming the Government's Social Mobility Tsar - predictably delivered to the dodgy opaquely funded free-market lobbying group Policy Exchange, which pushes libertarian-right ideology. Image
She starts by downplaying the importance of inequality & social mobility, attempting to discredit the evidence which is crystal clear that rising inequality is a key contributing factor to the lack of social mobility: her first move is to separate inequality from social mobility.
Her heavily implied suggestion is that accidents of birth are really not that important, & thus structural issues should be pretty much disregarded, although she (reluctantly) accepts "Those born nearest the top have advantages over those born nearest the bottom" - no shit. Image
Read 43 tweets
Jun 8
#THREAD

Opening contribution to the Special Issue 'Cultural Studies & Education: A Dialogue of Disciplines?' - Guest Editors Bill Green & Andrew Hickey survey the pedagogical & disciplinary intersections of Cultural Studies & Education.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
The Editors cast a distinction between the pedagogical & educational, and from this basis argue that predominant accounts of Cultural Studies’ educative purpose derive from the relationship that the field has maintained with formal and institutional sites of Education.
Cultural Studies sought to ‘awaken the desire for education amongst working people in the belief that education was central to the cause of emancipation’, asking how ‘experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, & institutional forms’.
Read 23 tweets
Jun 8
#THREAD

New research: 'High-speed broadband availability, Internet activity among older people, quality of life & loneliness' - Gretta Mohan & Seán Lyons, 2022.

What does the #evidence say - and what did the #propaganda say? 🧐

#BroadbandCommunism
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
Using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, linked to administrative data on high-speed broadband availability from infrastructure maps, this study examines patterns of Internet uses and psychosocial outcomes for over 3500 people aged 50 plus across Ireland. ImageImage
High-speed broadband availability is associated with higher reported levels of home Internet access, greater frequency of use, & more engagement with Internet activities.

Controlling for demographic & socio-economic circumstances, quality of life is higher among daily users. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets

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