Julian Dobson | ukwatch.net

Back to the 1980s

Ellie Keen — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:20:07 +0000

Anyone hearing business and enterprise minister John Hutton this week might be forgiven for thinking they’d been transported back to the 1980s.

All you’d need to complete the picture is Kylie Minogue’s dulcet tones on the radio and Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney sketch on telly every week.

Mr Hutton, in case you’re wondering which millennium we’re in, has been waxing lyrical about ambition.

Greed is good, he almost said. What he did say was that there’s no conflict between aspiring to the lifestyle of the super-rich and tackling child poverty: ‘Our overarching goal that no one should get left behind must not become translated into a stultifying sense that no one should be allowed to get ahead.’

Having just seen my team of super-rich so-called footballers thumped 4-0 three times in succession, I’m not so sure about the value of celebrating huge salaries.

A few months on jobseekers’ allowance would do them the world of good.

More to the point, there’s simply no evidence that the poor are held back because the rich can’t fulfil their ambitions.

That’s classic trickle-down economics: if you have more money than you know what to do with, it creates jobs for butlers and valets.

People thought the slave trade was justified because it created jobs, too.

Mr Hutton declared this week that ‘any progressive party worth its name must enthusiastically advocate empowering people to climb without limits.’ So we should stop bashing the rich.

But ‘bash the rich’ is a slogan I haven’t heard since the poll tax protests. And as Tony Blair has demonstrated since resigning as prime minister, the Labour Party can be as good a road to riches as any.

Yet policy after policy leaves the poor in poverty. And an important paper from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation this week showed how far we need to go to solve that conundrum.

The paper investigated whether people-based or place-based policies were most successful. Its conclusion was that we really don’t know.

Some programmes aimed at the poorest, such as Sure Start, appear to have been hijacked by the ‘less disadvantaged’, it reports (there’s ambition for you).

Others have made a difference, but how much is impossible to tell because there hasn’t been any rigorous assessment of what would have happened otherwise.

Anyone who walks the streets of our poorest areas will know that it isn’t the tax burden on the richest that holds back progress.

It’s the scarcity of support for the frontline services and community organisations that help to generate ambition and aspiration where there is none.

Lifetime Homes

Ellie Keen — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:54:19 +0000

Maybe it’s my age, but I had more than a sense of déjà vu when Hazel Blears and Caroline Flint announced the government’s policy on lifetime homes this week. It’s great to see the enthusiasm, but it is a bit like watching a teenager discover rock-’n’-roll.

For those who missed this seismic moment, the government has decreed that new standards of accessibility (lifetime homes, to those in the know) should apply to new housing – and that we shouldn’t stop there, but should think in terms of ‘lifetime neighbourhoods’ too. I’m all for this, as I’m already worrying about how I’ll get my pavement buggy down to the local alehouse and back up the hill after a pint or three.

But for those who equate government announcements with action, let’s just pause and consider how long it’s taken to get here. Back in the mid 1990s, I edited a magazine about housing and was quite closely involved in this sort of thing. We ran a campaign calling on the then Tory government and on social landlords, then quaintly known as housing associations, to ensure all new homes were built to lifetime homes standards.

Fast forward a decade and a half, and here’s the announcement we’ve been waiting for. From 2013. Oh, and social housing should lead the way, with new homes conforming to the standards by 2011. And there’ll be a national housing advice service, something else that did the rounds a decade or two ago.

Apart from the sheer cheek of presenting such tardiness as a great leap forward, while giving the construction industry another three years of unsustainable practice, this new national strategy is far less visionary than it purports to be. Lifetime neighbourhoods is a fine concept, but surely there’s more to it than better lighting and appropriately positioned bus stops.

The heart of a neighbourhood is the activity that goes on there, and there’s a great opportunity to invest in neighbourhood centres and organisations that bring older people together, enabling them to use their talents for mutual support and volunteering. People wouldn’t get so irate about post offices closing if something better took their place.

Perhaps the most amusing line in the announcement was this: ‘The government is clear that urgent action is required now to better design communities and support older people.’ Most of us show more urgency in visiting the dentist.

The Causes of Poverty

Ellie Keen — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:52:59 +0000

The great urbanist Jane Jacobs was never one to hedge her opinions with ifs and buts. ‘To seek causes of poverty is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes,’ she thundered in The economy of cities. ‘Only prosperity has causes.’

If only Joseph Rowntree had known, before donating his fortune to a foundation dedicated to discovering the causes of poverty.

Think of the academics who could have found gainful employment investigating how to successfully manufacture widgets instead.

If we are to read anything into recent shifts of public spending, it’s that Gordon Brown accepts the Jacobs thesis: the way out of poverty is to create work. Hence the decline of neighbourhood renewal in the government lexicon and its replacement with ideas like the working neighbourhoods fund.

This government wouldn’t be the first to hold to the dictum is that the only escape from poverty is to work your way out.

Long before Hitler, the slogan ‘Arbeit macht frei’ was the clarion call of the doomed Weimar Republic. But despite everyone’s best efforts, the poor are still with us.

The fact is that we have not yet found a way of creating wealth that does not simultaneously, and as a product of its activity, also generate poverty.

This is a conundrum because the failure to create wealth generates even deeper poverty. So Jacobs is right that we must look to the causes of prosperity; and Rowntree is right that we must continue to search out the causes of poverty.

What really doesn’t help, though, is to indulge in public hand-wringing without acknowledging that poverty is a by-product of the way we have chosen to live.

Launching the government’s new Child Poverty Unit this week (now there’s a touch of brilliance) Ed Balls, secretary of state for children, intoned: ‘Ending child poverty is a simple moral imperative; it has no place in modern Britain.’

Whether or not it’s a moral imperative, child poverty will continue unless and until we recognise that in even the most flourishing economy many get left behind, and their children suffer as a consequence.

The government can leave the market to its own inefficiencies, or we can collectively use more of our national wealth to ensure that those left behind are not discarded, and have opportunities that allow them to succeed in the future. What we get out depends on what we put in.

Carbon Trading?

Ellie Keen — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:54:35 +0000

Imagine a football league where, if a team has a run of bad results, it could simply buy points from another club.

So poor tottering Tottenham, for instance, instead of spending £16m on a misfiring striker, could use the dosh to procure points from Manchester City, saving Sven-Goran Eriksson from the dangers of vertigo in the process.

Conversely, an over-achieving team like Bristol City could sell points to help, say, either or both of the Sheffield clubs avoid an ignominious drop.

Promotion and relegation could be decided not by performance on the pitch but by who will do business with you, and on what terms.

Unfair? Unsportsmanlike? Open to abuse? Welcome to the world of carbon trading, where just such a system operates in the exchange of carbon credits – a scheme which compares unfavourably with bundling up US sub-prime mortgage loans and flogging them on to high street banks.

And has it brought about a reduction in CO2 emissions? You’ll see Accrington Stanley winning the Premier League first.

This is a tad worrying, because we really do need a system that drives down energy use and moves us towards an economy and communities that are genuinely sustainable.

News this week that ministers are considering abandoning the European renewable energy target (20% from renewable sources by 2020) is still more disconcerting.

Apparently it will cost about £4bn a year for us to get to 9%. Has Gordon Brown not heard the phrase ‘invest to save’?

We live in a strangely dysfunctional world where we’re happy to applaud Al Gore to the rafters but do so little in response to what we know about climate change that we’ll struggle to offset the energy consumed in the awareness-raising.

Last week Forum for the Future issued a league table of sustainable cities in the UK.

This is good news (especially if you live in Brighton; less so if your home is in Hull) but unfortunately the forum can’t offer meaningful rewards for improvement.

It wouldn’t take much imagination, though, to tweak the local government finance system to provide real incentives to progress towards sustainability.

Councils that promote and subsidise large-scale domestic micro-generation could win additional freedoms or funds. Planners can set tougher targets for zero-carbon homes.

The opportunities are there: has central or local government the will or the nous to grasp them?

Social Justice?

jo — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:52:42 +0000

Whisper who dares, but could the Conservative party have elected a social democrat as its leader? Has the party that famously coined the expression, if it isnt hurting, it isnt working suddenly donned the mantle of Willy Brandt and Bill Clinton?

David Cameron, if were to believe the hype, has more in common with Gandhi than Norman Tebbit. Hell cry social justice faster than a retired colonel can order a pink gin. Hes the supporter of social entrepreneurs and saviour of the voluntary sector.

His first act, in setting up policy groups to scrutinise key national issues, was smart: it means he doesnt really have to show his hand. In the meantime he can tour the nation to the same acclaim that donkeys show the holders of carrots.

But beware of those who sound off about social justice without explaining exactly what they mean. Social justice is motherhood and apple pie: but there are mothers who beat their kids, and apple pies youd gag on.

Did you know theres a Social Justice Party? Its manifesto includes abolishing social facilities in prison, forcing benefit claimants to work, and legalising drugs. Possibly not what Mr Cameron has in mind.

Mr Cameron wants serious, long-term thinking about Britains social problems (has everyone forgotten the Social Exclusion Units policy action teams?) and practical ideas to empower the least well-off to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth (has nobody been doing any work on this lately?).

Social justice isnt simply the art of making pious pronouncements about the troubles of the worst-off. Its recognising why they are worse off: and you cant do that without talking about the economy.

All mainstream parties are hooked up to an economic philosophy where the winners are those with the greatest competitive advantage. You cant divorce your approach to the losers from hard decisions about how you distribute the winnings.

Traditionally, Tories have believed winners have the right to enjoy the fruits of their labour. But if theyre serious, in a market economy, about social justice – eliminating poverty and disadvantage – then they must manage the market accordingly. Ultimately, no government can escape choices about revenue. If we arent prepared to raise it, we cant spend it.