Paul Bristow

Meant to publish this at the beginning of the year, but forget to queue it over Christmas.

It's a report from a December 2008 Hammersmith and Fulham council cabinet meeting where local spoke against council plans to move the council contact centre to Rochdale.

Thought it might be a timely reminder of the realities of Hammersmith and Fulham council's much-vaunted council tax cuts: 

We go to a mid-sized meeting room at Hammersmith and Fulham Town Hall, where a group of local people and council contact centre staff sit before the cocky, elitist and - in the case of councillor Lucy Ivimy, racist - Tory cabinet, to beg to keep the council's contact centre in Hammersmith, and to keep their jobs.

The locals have exactly five minutes to talk the council out of its plans to move its local contact centre to Rochdale. Those plans include making everyone who currently works in the contact centre redundant, and doubtless form a crucial part of the council's ongoing campaign to move moneyless people who use and provide public services out of Hammersmith, and rich people who don't need public services in, a la Wandsworth and Westminster, etc. 

The local people in the room aren't talking about that at the moment, though, because they're being distracted by an unexpected, if revealing, side act. The council's deputy leader - one Nicholas Botterill, who sits alongside council leader Stephen Greenhalgh - is pulling faces and laughing at the local people who've turned up to address the cabinet. It's an extraordinary display, and not a heartening one. Botterill is giggling at the the locals and their plight and screwing his little rat face up at them, presumably for the benefit of Tory sympathisers in the audience. Krissy O'Hagan - the locals' spokesperson, and contact centre union rep - is reading, nervously, a speech in favour of keeping the contact centre in Hammersmith, and public services generally, and Botterill is wrinkling his face up and laughing at her.

He makes such an ass of himself that council leader Stephen Greenhalgh is forced to tell him to shut up.

'No! No! Don't!' Greenhalgh hisses in full view of all. Greenhalgh has grasped that it's no longer the done thing to jeer publicly at low earners, but maybe the message hasn't trickled down to Botterill. Greenhalgh's cabinet has learned that mocking black people isn't on - a full year has passed since the earlier-mentioned cabinet member Lucy Ivimy revealed the H&F Tory hand on race with a remarkably bigoted commentary about Asian hygiene standards - but low earners with working class accents are still fair game.

This is the latest article in a series about Hammersmith and Fulham Council's cutting of funding to voluntary sector organisations, and its targeting in particular of the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre, which is about to lose 60% of its funding.

There are links to the earlier articles in this series at the end of this story. There are also links to the Conservative blogs that have been discussing this issue and these posts.

Community law centres aren't always popular with the national and local politicians that fund them, but surely that's par for the course?

Law centres were set up to provide free legal advice to people who can't afford to pay for legal help and representation. Often, these people are users of public services like immigration services, council housing, and welfare. And there are, unfortunately, times when these people are not given the right advice about their immigration, housing and welfare entitlements.

The truth is that government agencies and councils are as capable of cocking up as the rest of us, and on an awesome scale when they really give it a go. They wrongly deny people their entitlements to housing benefits, or at work, or they don't act on complaints with quite the vigour you'd hope.

And who can blame them for these shambles? Times ain't exactly high in the public-sector trenches. Frontline staff - people who know as much as anyone about the ways that complex benefits systems work and combine - are being culled at a majestic rate. God only knows what is happening at the Home Office. Councils are a riot

Having a discussion with Hammersmith and Fulham Tory councillor Paul Bristow over at his blog at the moment. We're talking about the proposed voluntary funding cuts at that council and the effect this will have on the Hammersmith Law Centre in particular. (Naughty Paul actually pinched a photo taken by one of the contributors to this site and put it on his site - see right. That was kind of how we all met each other. Ten points for taste, though - they are pretty good photos).

Anyway - trying to get Paul and council leader Stephen Greenhalgh to agree to an interview on the voluntary funding at Hammersmith and Fulham topic.