On the 9th of April this year, directly following a horrific knife murder in my town's centre - carried out on a busy shopping street in the middle of the afternoon - that left a 16-year-old boy dead and a 20-year-old man facing life in prison, I wrote to my local council regarding my concerns on this matter, with specific reference to the much-hyped fictional Netflix drama, Adolescence.

In the letter (which you can read in full here), I expressed my severe misgivings about the "wisdom" of showing this slick TV drama to thousands of impressionable local children (as Netflix and the government are conspiring to do), in the wake of a tragic knife murder involving a school-aged boy.

Echoing the concerns of top psychologists and child safeguarding experts, I pointed out that showing Adolescence (which was not made for a school-aged audience) to children as young as eleven, was running the risk of introducing children to dangerous ideas that they were not previously aware of, and, in so-doing, even "radicalising" them.

In short, I warned that showing Adolescence in schools is far more likely to create more knife crime, than it is to reduce it.

I sent my letter to every member of the council, as well as all local MPs, and, in the two calendar weeks since, I have received a total of three responses.

I will relate them - and my replies - in the order in which I received them.

The first response was from Carole Pattison (Labour), leader of the council. It said:

Miri, as a responsible journalist I hope you will not be listening to the sensationalism that some are promoting this incident with and instead respect the polices statement that they have issued to the press.

Of course it is an horrific incident but before jumping to conclusions about how and why this happened I am prepared to listen to the facts and evidence.

Kind Regards,

Carole

I replied to Carole as follows:

Dear Carole, 

Your response has completely failed to address any of the issues I raised in my letter, which relate to the potential screening of the fictional drama Adolescence in the locality’s schools and whether you, in your professional capacity as a councillor paid by public money, are going to oppose this? 

To reiterate, I am a tax payer who contributes to your wages and you, as a responsible elected representative, are answerable to members of the public who you are employed to serve. 

Regards,

Miri

I received no further response from Carole.

The next response was from an independent ward councillor, who is not one of my own ward councillors (none of whom replied, as they consistently do not whenever I contact them), which was the only response I received that was appropriate and professional. It read:

Hi Miri

Firstly, I would like to thank you for the email you have sent me. I have read the horrific contents of the email and the concerns you have raised. 

I totally agree with you, and I can guarantee you that I will strongly oppose the notion of local schools showing the inflammatory television show to their students.  

I totally standby with the psychologist who have cautioned the Government with their findings.   

kind regards

Hanifa

I replied to Hanifa:

Dear Hanifa,

Many thanks for your prompt and informative reply. I greatly appreciate that you are treating these issues with the gravity they deserve, and that you will oppose the screening of Adolescence in local schools.

If I can be of further help to you in this campaign, please do let me know.

Best regards,

Miri

The third and final response I received was from the Labour Party's Graham Turner, councillor in the ward that neighbours mine, Golcar, and whom I stood against in 2022, where he won by a tiny margin of less than 100 votes. Perhaps for this reason, Mr. Turner has always appeared to take great exception to me, as he made sure to reflect in his response. He said:

Good afternoon, Ms Finch

I have read and noted your comments.

I have also had a close look at your web site to better understand where you are coming from.

I think it’s probably reasonable to say that I don’t agree with your comments and with your philosophy in general.

I won’t be calling for schools not to show adolescence, as I believe that any decision on that should be up to the individual schools, as they are the best judge if its appropriate to show it to the students.

I am not entirely sure what the relevance to council tax and car parking charges are to the very sad incident that resulted in the death of a young man.

Kind Regards

Cllr Graham Turner

I replied to Turner:

Dear Mr. Turner,

Thank you for your response. 

I note you have looked at my website and that you "don’t agree with [my] comments and with [my] philosophy in general".

However, this is completely immaterial to the issues I have raised, since you are a public servant paid to serve the local community as a whole, not merely those individuals with whom you agree. In addition, may I remind you that you were elected by a very small minority of the total electorate (13%), which suggests that the large majority of eligible voters do not agree with you. 

You state that you will not be calling for schools not to show Adolescence because you believe that "that should be up to the individual schools, as they are the best judge if its appropriate to show it to the students".

Can you qualify why you believe individual schools are the best judges of this decision, rather than the top psychologists and experts in child safeguarding who have so strongly cautioned against it? 

Teachers are not qualified in either psychology or criminology, they are qualified in teaching. Schools may therefore be best placed to judge the appropriate way to transmit literacy and numeracy to their students. They are not, however, well placed to override the professional opinion of highly trained and experienced experts who have warned that showing Adolescence in schools could prove "catastrophic".

It is of note that teachers often lack any significant real world professional experience outside of education. So we would be foolish to the point of recklessly arrogant to dismiss the informed opinions of real-world professionals and defer to schoolteachers instead.

If it turns out that the schoolteachers' judgement was wrong, and that the top psychologists were right - which is by far the more likely scenario than the other way around - will you be instrumental in holding schools accountable for their catastrophic error of judgement that may cost lives?  

It is regrettable that you do not understand why it is relevant to mention my status as a tax-payer when corresponding with a tax-payer-funded individual and body, so please allow me to clarify.

Kirklees Council in general, and individual councillors in particular, are paid by public money. This money comes from tax-payers. I am a tax-payer, meaning I fund Kirklees Council and the councillors on it, of whom you are one.

When tragic incidents occur that threaten the sense of safety in our community, those of us who fund the local council - through council tax and other charges - have an inalienable right to ask hard questions of our local representatives. I have the right to feel safe in my local town centre and when that is not happening, it is my right to raise the issue - and related wider issues - with my local representatives, and ask how they intend to respond. That is one of many services that we taxpayers pay for. 

To sum: you (and all councillors) are accountable and answerable to those you are elected to serve and who pay your wages, regardless of your personal feelings about their views. 

Yours sincerely,

Miri Finch

I have not heard again from Mr. Turner.

(And apologies to teachers, no offence to whom was intended in my reply... I was merely attempting to highlight the rank hypocrisy of council bootlickers who fawned all over "experts" during the fake plague, but now apparently feel we can completely disregard them in favour of schoolteachers, some of whom are 22 years old and only left education a matter of months ago themselves.)

I think the responses I received - and, particularly, the lack of them (there are a total of 69 councillors on Kirklees Council, reflecting a response rate of 4%) - gives a pretty accurate demonstration of how our "elected representatives" generally view us.

If we're lucky, we'll get one or two good apples who treat us and our concerns with respect (and I was very pleased with the response I received that reflected that), but, on the whole, one can expect to be either ignored and dismissed, or belittled and dismissed.

That has been my overwhelming experience with Kirklees Council, since I first started corresponding with them five years ago, and since which time, I have paid them many thousands of pounds in council tax, although, as Graham Turner points out - clearly reflecting the feelings of most councillors - he doesn't see why that is related to my expecting the council to provide me with an actual service.

Perhaps some public exposure of the general attitudes and behaviours of Kirklees Council's public servants might help them to reflect a little more deeply on whether this is an appropriate way to conduct themselves, and whether it creates good PR for the council generally and the Labour Party in particular.

I will be following up my letter to the council via all the pertinent channels (and, perhaps, some impertinent ones too...), and will, of course, keep all readers fully abreast of further developments.

I very much encourage all readers to do the same with your local representatives. Remember - and just as the directory for their email addresses explicitly tells us - they work for you.

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