Four kids kicking flowers in a park, and somehow it has already been worked out how they'll turn out later in life. That's nonsense, utter nonsense. I'm not saying they did nothing. It's a horrible wee thing to do and they probably know it. Or maybe they don't. Either way that isn't a decent argument. It's not even an argument, it's moralising nonsense. The argument is where this comes from, and that gets it backwards every single time. Right, let's do this properly, shall we? Working class kids in this country are being left behind. White working class kids are very much included. That isn't a feeling, it's the figures, and it has been for years. In England, in the last full school year, kids on free school meals were suspended at a rate of 26.66 suspensions per 100 pupils. Kids who weren't on free school meal? At a rate of 5.41. Permanently excluded, 0.32 against 0.05. Poor kids get permanently excluded at more than 6 times the rate. And by the time they sit their GCSEs they're 19 months behind. Widest since the series started in 2013. Scotland's no much better either. Of last year's leavers, 27.9% from the poorest fifth of areas went into higher education. From the richest fifth, 63.9%. The gap in leaving school with even one Higher is 37.7% . Three months after leaving, 6.4% from the poorest areas were unemployed against 1.7% from the richest. Exclusions, 23.9 per 1,000 in the poorest fifth, 6.2 in the richest. Then there's the bit almost nobody cares about. Reduced timetables. Somewhere between 39,000 and 43,000 kids in England on a reduced timetable in one autumn term, and of the primary ones put on it by the school, over 90% had additional needs. The government's own rules say you're not allowed to use it to manage behaviour. In Scotland there isn't even a national figure. So a boy gets sent home at lunch time, every day, from October. He is not excluded on paper. He doesn't appear anywhere. And 4 years later somebody films him in a park acting dafty, and says "look, he will become a fascist". Piss off. To reverse that we need funding in schools and not snobby comments and stupid attitudes. For examples; Newham, one of the poorest boroughs in England. Its poor kids finished primary last year with no gap at all. None. At GCSE, 3.9 months, smallest in the country. Then go to West Berkshire, which is not poor, and it's 25.7 months. The poor place beat the rich one by 22 months. And it isn't a London trick either. The two biggest improvements in the country since 2019 were Salford, which closed its GCSE gap by 4.7 months, and Plymouth, by 4.4. Middlesbrough, 82% white at the last census and about as deprived as England gets, has a primary school gap of around 5 to 7 months when the national figure is 10, and it has cut it by 2 months since 2019. Same story every time. It is not who the kids are. It is what is round about them. Scotland has done the same thing and can prove it. In the mid 2010s about 14% of full time first degree entrants at Scottish universities came from the poorest fifth of areas. By 2023-24 it was 16.7%. Count the college routes in and it's 19.2%, against a 20% target for 2030. And they do fine once they're in. The share of those students finishing with a first or a 2:1 has gone from 66% to 75%. Nobody's culture changed in ten years. A target got set, college routes got funded, institutions were made to report on it, and the number moved. It's stalled a bit lately and this year's 18% milestone is looking tight, which tells you the same thing from the other side. Take the money away and it stops moving. Just fucking think about what's actually round a kid who has zero support in place in a scheme or a neighborhood left to rot for 20 years. From damp the landlord won't fix to somebody in the house drinking, or using, or ill, or working double shifts and never in. And then add a school running short on staff and resources, and a waiting list for every service you could name, and the youth club shut, because youth services in England are down 76% since 2010, and half the youth workers are gone, and 1 in 12 councils hasn't got a youth centre left at all. And it doesn't stop with him. That's the bit people miss. It goes round again. The OECD reckons it takes 5 generations for a child born into the poorest tenth in this country to climb to average income. Five. That is not a family that made bad choices one Tuesday, that is a hundred and fifty years. Nearly three quarters of the children of graduates here go to university. About a fifth of the kids from low income families do. So the boy on the half day grows up and has his own boy, and that wean starts exactly where his da started, same street, same damp, same waiting list, same nothing to do all day. Round and round it goes. And every time it comes round, somebody films it and stigmatise the working class for being fucked over due to the enforced austerity. Then the boy does something "antisocial" and everyone acts like it fell out the sky. Piss off. Now, I'm not saying don't criticise behaviour. Criticise it. Some of it is rotten, and the people living next door to it know that better than anybody online does, because they're the ones putting up with it. But behaviour on its own explains nothing. If that's all you've got, you're reading the surface of the water and calling it the sea. And here's how you know it's the wrong tool. The hardest anti-migrant politics in this country comes from people who are impeccably behaved. Polite. Employed. Mortgage paid. With large inheritances. Never kicked a flowerbed in their lives, wouldn't dream of it. They vote for it, they fund it, they put it into law. If being a wee nuisance at 15 predicted your politics at 45, the well-mannered would be safe, and they are absolutely not. So the forecast doesn't even work on its own terms. It runs the other way too, by the way. Kids written off at 14 turn into perfectly decent adults all the time, when somebody reaches them in time. That's what the Newham number is. And the Salford number. And the Scottish one. Those aren't miracles. They're just kids who got a chance at the right moment instead of a prediction. Punching down at kids is the easiest thing going and it has never once fixed anything. It doesn't matter who's doing it or which direction it's coming from. Nobody in history started caring about school because a stranger online wrote them off at 15. What works is dull and it costs money. Staff. Buildings that open. Something at the end worth having. And we know it works, because everywhere it has actually been tried, it worked. Four kids and a flowerbed is not the fascist mobs in Glasgow or elsewhere attacking normal people or immigrant. Don't put them in the same sentence. Grow the fuck up, and put your snobby attitudes away. You can't do anti-racist politics without working class consiouncess. Sources for anyone interested in data: DfE suspensions and exclusions 2024/25 explore-education-statistics… EPI Annual Report 2026, local authority gaps epi.org.uk/annual-report-202… Scottish Gov leaver attainment and destinations 2024-25 gov.scot/publications/summar… Scottish Gov attendance and exclusions 2024-25 gov.scot/publications/school… SFC Report on Widening Access 2023-24 sfc.ac.uk/publications/repor… SFC on the widening access 2030 target sfc.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/… OECD, A Broken Social Elevator? oecd.org/en/publications/bro… FFT Datalab on part-time timetables ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2… DfE attendance guidance, p25 assets.publishing.service.go… CYPCS on part-time timetables cypcs.org.uk/resources/ecyp-… ONS Census 2021, Middlesbrough ons.gov.uk/visualisations/ce… YMCA State of Play 2026 ymca.org.uk/local-authority-…