Thursday, 22 November 2012

Anti-localism disease in social policy - from the Dieback Administration

Ash diebackCivic Voice have cranked up their campaign against the government’s proposals to change the planning system. As with the creeping phenomenon of academies, the government’s attitude to planning seems to be peculiarly anti-localist, contradicting all the rhetoric about localism we’ve been hearing.

‘These proposals will mean neighbours will not be able to object to unsightly developments and big business will be able to install broadband boxes and other infrastructure without notifying the local council. Effectively removing the community voice…’

The effect could well be to erode rapidly the character of neighbourhoods that have taken shape over time in a considered, fundamentally democratic way.

And it’s the erosion of the context for and everyday evidence of local democracy that most concerns me. Policies that treat schools and libraries as if they were challenges in a demolition ball arcade game are part of the same disdainful, destructive attitude towards the places where people live.

Similarly, today we had the local government secretary reinforcing the creed that locally elected councils might not be trusted to take decisions on local services, so that central government might have to confiscate their right to do so. (Note his ludicrous use of the phrase 'hard-working residents').

And I can’t even begin to contemplate the impact of the widely-derided universal credit system on social support. I was in a meeting of local community and voluntary agencies this morning where there was a sense of desperation at the trauma and havoc to come. No doubt some official would call such forebodings ‘hysterical’, in very much the same way that, with reference to the latest Children’s Commissioner’s report on child sexual abuse,

‘a Government source said it was “difficult to overstate the contempt” with which ministers viewed the report’s conclusions.’ (Mail)

The prime minister seems to have disagreed, but hey, that’s ministers for you, they're a jolly lot, never the kind of folk to take such an issue too seriously.

I believe W. H. Auden kept a rotten apple on his mantlepiece at Oxford in the late nineteen thirties (no, a fruit, not a computer, dummy), to remind him of the condition of Europe. Today we have our own comparable living-dying image to remind us of the state of this country. The telegraph reported recently that ash dieback is ‘now beyond containment’. There are some kinds of devastation from which the potential for any kind of recovery is hard to identify, and the loss too hard to contemplate.

Don’t be surprised if the present government, or what passes for a government, goes down in history as the Dieback Administration. Now I think of it, that might make a decent title for a film. Ken Loach, you’re needed.

 

22 Nov 2012 21:02:26 | Social policy

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Social justice, child care, and a tale of a Christmas carol It seems we care a lot about our lack of care for children these days. The phrase ‘child abuse’ appears routinely in almost every news bulletin in some connection or other; child neglect has been an issue of expressed concern for the House of Commons Education Select Committee and more recently for the education secretary; and the government has just launched its consultation on the measurement of child poverty, informed in a timely way by this chid poverty map on the Guardian’s data blog. When issues of social justice and children coincide, it’s just the sort of context in which someone says, ‘what we need is another Dickens!’ Indeed. The other day I was told of a family where two children go to school on alternate days, because there is only one uniform to share. An issue like this would have incensed Dickens, particularly because of his own personal experience of disrupted education. As it happens, I was asked to give a short talk about Dickens the other day, to introduce some readings from A Christmas carol as part of an open air ‘Victorian’ high street festival. Groping around for some reminders, I chanced upon a phrase used by one of Dickens’s biographers, Edgar Johnson, who refers to his ‘uncompromising humanitarian radicalism’: fifteen syllables in three words may be OTT, but what an encapsulation! Sadly, we can’t have another Charles Dickens. Not because there are not talented, persuasive writers and passionate social commentators in our own time – there are. But because no commentator today could expect to sustain the level of attention that Dickens managed to command for several decades in the nineteenth century. The media channels were fewer and the hall of fame far less crowded then; and Dickens had the skills, energy and temperament to maximise his impact in the interests of social justice. He wasn’t ‘just’ a novelist, he was a communicator adept in the dominant media of his time. Lord Northcliffe described him as the greatest magazine editor of his or any age – how was that possible? It’s scary to be reminded that Dickens died at about the age I am now – he achieved so much that we might mistakenly think of him as long-lived. All of which leaves me wondering quite why we are in such a mess now, and what is needed to signal positive social change. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to start interpreting the above-mentioned child poverty map as representing many thousands of family crises, weeks of hunger, months of debilitating stress, sickness, sense of abandonment, fear and maltreatment and loss and ruined lives. What kind of influence over our power-mongers is needed to restore a respectable insistence on social justice? In 1843, Dickens was just 31 years old and a huge celebrity. He was at the height of his powers, full of ideas and overflowing with creativity. And he was besieged on all sides by people seeking to persuade him to use his influence in one...
PREVIOUS POST
Urban density and the green environment At the end of this article about urban density and NIMBYism, Kaid Benfield suddenly strikes right at an issue that has long bothered me. When developers win their ways with the density card, the local green environment usually doesn’t stand much chance. I think that has knock-on effects in terms of sociability and health which remain largely unrecognised. Benfield writes: ‘if we designed density so that it brought more, not less, nature into communities, density could become far more appealing and popular. And I would particularly urge that the nature we integrate into development – plantings, water, trees, open space, green roofs, living walls, and so forth – be designed to serve multiple purposes simultaneously. A menu of choices for multitasking might include, for example, green infrastructure to catch and filter stormwater, places of play for kids and respite for adults, plantings that maximize the absorption of carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen for cleaner and fresher air, green spaces that reduce the heat island effect, and/or signature public spaces to create a sense of place.’ I’d add that I think we need to be sharper at getting quickly from having a few examples of good practice to ensuring the dominance of such an approach as standard practice. The pic above I took in Luton, England, about three years ago, from a rolling bus.

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments