2011年8月22日

England riots: The return of the underclass

英國右派保守黨說倫敦暴動是因為「社會生病了」、「道德淪喪」和「家庭教育失敗」;左派工黨說暴動是因為「貧富差距擴大」和「政策往富人傾斜,窮人感覺被遺棄」。政治上的爭論大概永遠都不會結束。但是上週看 BBC Young Voters' Question time,有個年輕人說了一個會讓保守黨汗顏的事實:

「當窮人每天工作十幾個小時,賺得錢卻連餬口都不夠的時候,政府怎麼能期待他們『有時間』照顧小孩!?有成功的家庭教育!?」


-------------------------------------------------------------------------


11 August 2011 Last updated at 10:59 GMT
Article written by Mark Easton Home editor

England riots: The return of the underclass

The Tory party's social policy guru Iain Duncan Smith believes Britain has witnessed the growth of a "more menacing underclass".

Listening to the voices on some of England's toughest estates trying to justify the rioting, looting and arson, it would be easy to concur with his theory of a "new generation of disturbed and aggressive young people doomed to repeat and amplify the social breakdown disfiguring their lives and others round them".

It had been thought the word "underclass" with its connotations of fecklessness and criminality had been expunged from the New Labour government's lexicon.

But it is back, a headline-writer's shorthand for the undeserving and dangerous poor who are burning and robbing their own communities.

Within weeks of coming to power in 1997, Tony Blair set up a Social Exclusion Unit inside the Cabinet Office specifically to deal with what his party painted as Margaret Thatcher's underclass - hundreds of thousands of people, workless, skill-less, often homeless and hopeless, a group cut off from mainstream society - dubbed the entrenched 5%.

Huge sums were pumped into schemes in the most deprived neighbourhoods, but tussles over budgets and the sheer challenge of engaging with people who are often hostile to officialdom meant ambition couldn't translate into outcome.

Instead Tony Blair went down the Respect Agenda route, pre-empting the rhetoric of responsibility and good manners that is now the language of the coalition.

Reporting as I have done from countless urban sink estates over the years, I have met many teenage lads baffled and resentful at their lack of opportunity to participate in the consumer society they care so much about.

It comes as little surprise that the looters have targeted trainer stores and sports shops.

Right and wrong

The commentator David Goodhart suggested this week that "laissez-faire liberalism (of the right economically, and the left culturally) has left too many people adrift, especially in the inner city, without sufficient structure or sense of obligation or meaning in their lives."

Yesterday, the prime minister suggested he agrees with this analysis when he said the problem was "a complete lack of responsibility, a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals."

That is what we need to change, he said.

But how? The Social Exclusion Task Force (as the Social Exclusion Unit became known after it was merged with the PM's Strategy Unit in 2006) has been wound up, its Whitehall interventionism at odds with Big Society entrepreneurism.

Mr Cameron stresses the importance of "discipline in schools" and a "welfare system that does not reward idleness".

His party's Work Programme is another great hope in getting the long-term jobless into employment. There's no money, he's relying on carrots and sticks supplied by others. Is that going to be enough to reach the entrenched 5%?

The politics

As MPs prepare for today's parliamentary statement on the disturbances, all parties are anxious that they cannot be portrayed as apologists for the rioting, blaming some perceived political failure that plays to a partisan case.

"Let's have the sociological argument in the weeks and months ahead", Nick Clegg said on the Today programme this morning.

But the question will have to be asked and answered at some point.
There have to be reasons why thousands of people have attacked their own neighbourhoods when, as the prime minister says, their behaviour is so obviously spectacularly counter-productive.

Destroying the businesses which bring wealth and jobs, attacking the officers trying to keep people safe, creating a climate of fear and resentment, all are certain to make lives worse not better.

When American inner-city streets were burning in 1967, President Lyndon Johnson set up a commission on civil disorders to answer three basic questions about the riots: "What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?"

The subsequent Kerner Report was dismissed as deeply flawed by conservatives who argued that it exonerated rioters for their criminal behaviour and placed the blame on wider society.

So when Lord Scarman was asked to "inquire urgently into the serious disorder" in Brixton in 1981, he was careful to insert a paragraph which said "the social conditions do not provide an excuse for disorder - all of those who in the course of the disorders in Brixton and elsewhere engaged in violence against the police were guilty of grave criminal offences".

But he did accept that social circumstances had created a "predisposition towards violent protest".

Is there such a predisposition now?

Can the root causes of the violence be pinned on bad politics as opposed to simply bad kids, bad parents and bad morals - "criminality - pure and simple"?

When the Home Affairs Select Committee completes its inquiry it will find itself treading that narrow line between condemning and contextualizing the unrest, but it would be hard to imagine any such investigation not wanting to consider what policies will be most effective in ensuring England's social landscape does not have parts left tinder-dry and combustible.

The bewildering events of the past few days are a reminder of why, however difficult, no country can afford to ignore any strata of its society.

2011年8月15日

人才宣言:十年內 台灣恐無人才可用

把人才流失的責任推給政府有點可笑,解決方案居然是引進外籍白領更是不可思議,特別是其中一個連署人是要新鮮人不要計較薪水的台大校長李嗣涔。如果政府有統計一下新鮮人的起薪:只要統計商管學生最容易找到工作的的台大和政大就好,十年前和現在的台政大新鮮人起薪幾乎相同。考慮到這十年來的通貨膨脹,這種新鮮人起薪變化實在非常荒謬;這也難怪人才流失那麼快了:語言能力夠好的,直接去上海、香港和新加坡找工作就好了,何必留在台灣?這則新聞和前幾天蕭萬長說「有感」的新聞一比,就知道台灣這些既得利益者的態度是多麼荒唐!

-----------------------------------------------------------

人才宣言:十年內 台灣恐無人才可用

【經濟日報╱記者黃文奇/台北報導】 2011.08.15 02:00 am


中央研究院院長翁啟惠昨(14 )日聯合18位產、學、媒體、藝文界代表發表「人才宣言」,他向政府呼籲,台灣已成為嚴重的「人才輸出國」,政府再不正視人才失衡問題,十年內台灣將無人才可用。

翁啟惠表示,他於數年前已經開始呼籲台灣人才失衡問題,今年4月起邀集產業界、學界甚至媒體、藝文界領袖共同研擬這份「人才宣言」,包括宏碁集團創辦人施振榮、台大校長李嗣涔、聯合報社長胡立台及雲門舞集創辦人林懷民等人於昨日共同發表宣言,強調台灣正「面臨一個空前的人才失衡危機」,呼籲各界正視。

翁啟惠表示,發展知識經濟是台灣該走的路,但過去十年來,台灣有49萬名合法居留外僑,其中有40萬人屬於勞工階級,白領階級僅2萬人,相較之下,台灣每年外移的人口卻達2萬至3萬人,以白領階級占大多數,已成了名副其實的人才輸出國。

針對外籍人士來台就業問題,宣言也指出,外國人需取得國內外相關系所碩士以上學位、或者學士學位但有二年以上工作經驗,才能受聘從事專門性及技術性工作;僑生與外籍生學校畢業後,在台工作起薪為4.79萬元。這些規定都讓人才晉用失去彈性。

針對外籍人士居留問題,宣言中也批評,外籍人士必須先放棄自己國籍才能取得台灣公民權,無公民權則無法支領月退俸,因此不願來台工作。

翁啟惠強調,人才外移的根本問題在於國外人才不敢進,而國內人才不想留,其中公教未分軌,薪資結構太制式化是癥結。此外,國內教育體系趨向單一化,技職體系培養出太多沒有技術的人才,也讓人才培養出現危機與斷層。值得注意的是,國外高階人才來台多所限制,也讓外籍菁英卻步。

此外,宣言也強調,應適時檢討我國移民、產業政策,吸引人才並改善產業結構,建構完整的知識經濟體系,加速建立如生技醫療、綠能、文創等知識密集的產業,作支撐教育與人才長期根留台灣的基礎。

翁啟惠指出,金融海嘯後,亞太地區成為人才競逐紅海,而鄰國已經做好因應措施,包括大陸未來5到10年,要吸引2,000 位高端科研與領導人才,而新加坡、香港、韓國、日本等都把網羅人才視同作戰,台灣不能再等。

【2011/08/15 經濟日報】@ http://udn.com

2011年8月6日

US AAA credit rating downgraded

US AAA credit rating downgraded

breaking news

One of the top credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's, has downgraded the United States' top-notch AAA rating.

S&P cut the long-term US credit rating by one notch to AA+ with a negative outllook, citing concerns about growing budget deficits.

S&P said it was because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough.

Washington was locked in months of acrimonious partisan bickering over a bill to raise the US debt ceiling.

As rumours swirled earlier about the downgrade, unnamed US officials had told US media that S&P's analysis of the US economic situation was deeply flawed.

Correspondents say a downgrade could further erode global investors' confidence in the US economy, which is already struggling with huge debts and unemployment of 9.1%.

S&P said in its report issued late on Friday: "The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilise the government's medium-term debt dynamics.

"More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges."