Hazel Blears

A few thoughts on the expenses scandal:

It's not so much that MPs have been feathering their first and second nests that is the outrage.

It's the poverty and misery that MPs cheerfully inflicted on society's most vulnerable citizens while they - MPs - were ransacking the allowances account, and, presumably, enjoying untold pleasant evenings out and in. Tis the lousy knowledge that even as oversold tarts like Hazel Blears were carefully explaining to us that salary control, frugality (particularly in the public sector), anti-union laws and the dreadful terms and conditions of the private sector were crucial to civilised society, they were beautifying moats and latrines, and reappointing flowerbeds, and paying off mortgages at such a canter that they missed the glorious moment when they finished.

The real tragedy is that none of it is any surprise - certainly not to those who have learned firsthand that modern government - much like old government, perhaps - looks actively to punish anyone without useful political or financial clout, and happily reward itself on the proceeds.

Trust in government - and indeed anyone in a position to cut the average guy a break - disappeared long before the sticky paws of Blears and Morley, et al, crept into the till. The trade union grassroots could give you hundreds, and probably thousands, local examples of skewed and screwed political decisions that have made life worse for just about everybody, apart from a handful of private sector contractors.

You may think here of small, but monumental (to locals, anyway) examples like the thousands of pounds cut from the budget of the Hammersmith community law centre, and the 100% funding cut to Hammersmith immigrant support group Horn of Africa (see law centre link above). As we speak, there are the plans to dismantle the sheltered housing scheme in north London (locals plan another protest in Hendon this week). It's all part of the same ideological wreckage that encourages some c-list bandit to profess that he didn't know he'd paid his mortgage. The list really does go on.

It includes the national disgrace that is the dire treatment of low paid careworkers around the country - people who have learned the very hard way that privatisation of care services means a fast route to subsistence living for anyone in a hands-on caregiving role.

Such as it is: This is my contribution to the Liberal Conspiracy response to Chapter 8 of Hazel Blears' communities in control document: Ownership and control. 

Chapter 8 looks at how citizens can move beyond being consulted or holding officials to account, to how people can own and run services for themselves, either by serving on local boards and committees, or through social enterprises and cooperatives.

Well.

Don't want to start on an arsey note, of course, but -

The first question I want to ask Hazel Blears when Hazel blathers on about the joys of handing community assets to the community to operate is 'you mean the few assets that New Labour hasn't allowed to be sold yet, Haze?'

I mean really, people - this has not been the golden age of community, or community assets, exactly: swathes of housing stock moved to arms' length management organisations, schools closed and ownership of new city academies handed to private sponsors, lidos closed, nursery schools shut and nursery places cut, etc, with Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative councils all cheerful offenders.

Various Olympic programmes, meanwhile, slash and burn community projects like the Manor Gardens allotments, and look set to scrag Greenwich Park monumentally, etc. Hazel, somehow, sees a world where happy communities club together to profitably run 'community centres, street markets, swimming pools, playgrounds and tracts of land, as well as derelict facilities such as a disused school, shop or pub.' I, unfortunately, see a world where local and national's government greatest - if inadvertent - contribution to community unity in recent times has been the relentless promotion of deeply unpopular anti-community initiatives that inspire communities to unite against them.

Posted at LiberalConspiracy as well.