{"id":11332,"date":"2016-12-18T19:23:29","date_gmt":"2016-12-18T17:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=11332"},"modified":"2016-12-18T19:23:29","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T17:23:29","slug":"the-javid-oath-is-this-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=11332","title":{"rendered":"The Javid Oath: Is This A Good Idea?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #333333;\">No. An important feature of the British way of life is that its citizens are not required to swear pointless oaths. Certain professions are sworn into full membership, as are MPs and members of the armed services. New citizens are sworn in. That is enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: start; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-spacing: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #333333;\">The present ruptures in society, first foretold in my book<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><em><span style=\"font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">2010 A Blueprint for Change,<\/span><\/em><span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>arise from the unfair elements of globalization,<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>seven<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>years of austerity, cuts to the financial support of public services to the point that most of them are breaking down, a failure to provide housing<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>at\u00a0affordable cost and also the advent of single faith schools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: start; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-spacing: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #333333;\">In a secular society faith schools do more harm than good. Faith can be nurtured through religious institutions but not as an education stream. What would help, since we do not have a written constitution, is at least a written summary of how the unwritten one works, so that the freedoms, rights and obligations which form the basis of our country can be taught in schools. As it is even the government does not know how it works.<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>It is doubtful if there are<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>fifty\u00a0people in the country who do. As for the oath, this is a pointless gesture to resolve issues which demand proper attention. Like social care for the elderly, for which the inadequate proposals, mostly robbing Peter to pay Paul, put forward by<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>Javid last week will do very little good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: start; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-spacing: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #333333;\">The only thing one can say about this minister is that, in<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>this\u00a0do nothing government, at least he tries\u00a0to do something.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No. An important feature of the British way of life is that its citizens are not required to swear pointless oaths. Certain professions are sworn into full membership, as are MPs and members of the armed services. New citizens are sworn in. That is enough. The present ruptures in society, first foretold in my book\u00a02010 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11335,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332\/revisions\/11335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}