Funding for Bookstart, which provides a free pack of books to every baby in the UK in order to “inspire, stimulate and create a love of reading that will give children a flying start in life”, is to be completely axed.

The organisation provides free books for children from the age of nine months until their first term of high school.

They began as a pilot project in 1992 but were awarded government funding in 2004 to become universal.  Despite having previously offered to take a 20% funding cut, Bookstart were recently  told they were to lose 100% of their £13m-a-year government grant, meaning the free books will end when the current contract does, in April.

Viv Bird, Chief Executive of Bookstart described being “astounded and appalled” on hearing the decision, saying:

“There was no dialogue. It was completely devastating.”

However, in the 10 days since the decision was announced, there have been messages of support and protest from a number of famous writers, including the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who said:

Support for Bookstart is support for the dreams and imaginations and futures of British children. To withdraw that support is to behave like Scrooge at his worst. Here’s hoping the powers-that-be see the light in tiime, as he did.

Duffy’s sentiments were echoed by previous Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion:

The decision to scrap Bookstart is an act of gross cultural vandalism. For the last 20-odd years the scheme has successfully introduced an enormous number of young people to both the pleasure and the necessity of reading and has been of tremendous benefit in the drive towards literacy. Very well organised, and very well run by Booktrust, it has become a national institution, and the envy of the world.The savings made by its abolition will be negligible; the damage done will be immense.

Renowned author Ian McEwan joined the chorus of support for Bookstart, saying:

I’m appalled to hear that Bookstart is for the chop and I’m counting on Michael Gove to reconsider. This modestly funded, truly civilised scheme has brought to millions of kids benefits far beyond the calculations of politicians. Who knows what seeds have been planted in young minds? It’s by initiatives like this that we hope to measure ourselves as a mature and thoughtful society. A U-turn on this would be an honourable choice.

But it’s Philip Pullman who spoke about Bookstart most beautifully:

It’s like seeing someone smashing aside a butterfly with the back of their hand: wanton destruction. Sheer stupid vandalism, like smashing champagne bottles as a drunken undergraduate. It doesn’t matter: someone else will clear it up. Well, if you miss the first years of a child’s development, nothing can clear it up. It’s gone. It won’t happen. A whole generation will lose out.

Bookstart is one of the most imaginative and generous schemes ever conceived. To put a gift of books into the hands of newborn children and their parents is to help open the door into the great treasury of reading, which is the inheritance of every one of us, and the only road to improvement and development and intellectual delight in every field of life.

Without access to literature, how can we be surprised when literacy levels are so low? In a world where many children start high school barely able to read and a child’s horror and confusion at receiving books for Christmas becomes an internet meme, we need a government that will encourage and nurture children, not abolish their chances in life to save a few pennies.

It sounds like something out of 1984, but actually, the philosophy that the free market = freedom, will always = freedom and can only = freedom is just about the cornerstone of the entire organisation of our planet. Cause it’s true, right?
Wrong. The notion that capitalism automatically equals democracy, political freedom and human rights is, as Naomi Klein bluntly exposes using nothing but hard fact in her book The Shock Doctrine, actually, fucking bollocks.
During the 1970s and 80s, ideas first developed at the University of Chicago under the economist Milton Friedman began to take hold globally: that the unregulated free market, without interfering governments and state run services, was the only way forward. Such a system of economic ‘liberty’, it was said, would inevitably lead to democracy, prosperity and jobs for all.

Did it? Haha, no! This is capitalism, remember? In fact, it turns out that the Friedmanite economics of spending cuts, privatisation and market ‘liberalisation’ had such catastrophic effects for ordinary people, that the only way it could be introduced was through shock, confusion and mass disorientation – the tactics of Shock. And. Awe.
Whether it’s a war, terrorist attack, military coup, natural disaster or state terror – all have been used as cover while mass programmes of anti-working class policies have been rammed through.

This is the basic thesis that Naomi Klein examines in The Shock Doctrine, focusing on, among others, post-coup Chile, post-Soviet Russia, post-invasion Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans, post-tsunami Sri Lanka, post-apartheid South Africa, post-Tiananmen China… see a theme developing here?
The book has recently been adapted into a documentary by acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom, which was screened on More4 last week. It’s not nearly as in depth or as captivating as the book, and in some parts feels a bit simplistic and disjointed, but is still a decent film which gets across Klein’s arguments effectively. The 80 minute documentary can be watched on the 4OD player for the next few weeks here:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-shock-doctrine/4od
Oh, and if you want to see a bunch of Glasgow people (and me!) shouting ‘JUMP!’ at the Bank of England, better wait until erm… about 1:15:25 or so…

Alfonso Cuaran (of directing the third Harry Potter film fame!) and Klein have also made this short film on the Shock Doctrine, which actually sums up the basics of the book in about 6 minutes..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSF0e6oO_tw

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