Alternatives to Robin Hood.
Child Trust Fund - This was a labour initiative. The urchin was lucky. All babies born between 2002 and 2011 received a voucher of £250. The parent or guardian could chose how to invest it, from risk free to fairly risky investment options. The parent can also chose to add upto £3k per annum. Upon the childs 18th birthday they have access to this money.
The urchins voucher is now worth nearly £2k and he is only six. The hope is, that by the time he is eighteen he will have a fairly substantial amount of money. All kids, rich or poor who were born during these times have the same opportunity.
Now i know that some of it will be wasted, pissed up the wall or misused in some way. The point is, the opportunity is there.
Of course, the scheme was closed by the tory government. boo hiss
I would like to see this scheme set up again. It gives kids hope.
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Another thing that happened during the last Labour govt - Every single child of school age was given a computer at school. It was theirs to take home. Nothing fancy, most of them were mini notebooks. Another opportunity for poor kids to keep up the pace. Many kids had no access to a computer before and little hope of being supplied by their parents.
It was heavily criticised by the right, and was stopped when they became government. They would rather keep the poor as low down the food chain as possible. the have and the have nots.
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I really like these schemes. It seems logical to me that a society whereby all kids have access to excellent resources, and where all kids have excellent opportunities to succeed and excel is going to be a society that we will all benefit from.
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I live in Longbridge. We used to make cars. For a hundred years the Longbridge plant was the main employer round here. It started with Austin, Austin Morris, Morris Motors, Austin Rover, British Leyland, Rover, MG etc. It was at one time the biggest car factory in the world. The plant produced the first iconic mini. Aeroplanes, too, such as Hawker Hurricane. It had it's own railway. Then, one day, it was no more. Longbridge became Scumsville. I used to look out of my window and see the shut down factory. It was vandalised. Looted. Eventually most of it bulldozed. It stayed like this for years. Not even a Labour government risked investment. It is now transformed. Thanks to an initiative from the European Commission. We have a new college, shops, supermarket's and offices and homes. The money came from Europe. The point is, it is working. International Business is occupying office space and creating jobs. It's .... nice. It is proof that places like Longbridge need investment. Not writing off. No area should be written off.
