CONFUSED OF JUBILEE AVE

Cllr. Taylor writing in his usual prosaic style, tried, in last week’s ‘Your Say’ section of the Reporter, to throw readers off the scent by highlighting the Coalitions fondness for making policy then amending it in parts. The councillor calls this ‘U-turning’.

 

Cllr Taylor surrounded by the latest development in flat-pack social housing

Personally, I call it totally inept thinking, but coming from a Labour councillor, whose party’s standard policy is to oppose then accept, apologise for their mistakes in government, then say how much better they could do it, seem somewhat ironic! But then again, it must be really tough being a member of a political party who has always left this country in a worse financial mess, than the one it inherited.

In his letter, the councillor has a pop at Tory think tanks, implying that they are the only party to employ these people.

That being the case, perhaps the councillor could throw some light on the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) which is recognised as a training ground for many of Labour’s special advisers, and have been credited with developing Labour’s policies on New Deal and Child Trust Funds. They are also funded by the Trade Unions!

Then there’s DEMOS. Once the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain, seen as close to Tony Blair before 1997 general election. The councillor must have heard of this organisation because this is who former Stalybridge and Hyde MP James Purnell joined, after he resigned his post as Labours Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions.

Also, COMPASS, a Pressure group which serves as a melting pot for the “progressive” Left of the Labour Party, again part funded by the Trade Unions.

Perhaps he’s forgotten about the Smith Institute, who employed adviser Ed Balls as paid research fellow before he became an MP in 2005. Then there’s the Fabian Society, an Historic socialist movement, which predates the founding of the Labour Party. In fact it was the Fabian Society Tax Commission in 2000 who was credited with influencing Labour to increase taxes to pay for public services.

And if all those have faded from the councillors selective memory, he must surely be aware of the New Local Government Network whose stated aim was to make local government more relevant and credible to local people; although having witnessed some of Tameside council’s policy decisions over the last few years, maybe the Deputy Leader needs to be reacquainted with this innovative group, which comprise of some of the more creative and ambitious local authorities.

Of course, there are literary hundreds of politically motivated ‘Think Tanks’ but in a world where we are surrounded by conceptually challenged, dysfunctional politicians, I say thank God, someone other than career bureaucrats and gangs of debilitated councillors are at least submitting a few suggestions on how to get this country once again moving in the right direction.

Anyway, I digress …after rambling on a bit more, about tightening our belts, slimming down and obesity, he got to ride his favourite hobby horse; Margaret Thatcher.

Does anyone else find it peculiar that socialists, even now, some 34 years later, are still smarting from a remark she made whilst being interviewed on her plans to bring the Labour government down.

She said, “…I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess than any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and socialists governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money!”

Well, here we are again, floundering in the mess that 13 years of Labour have left us. The only difference this time is we do not have the same calibre of politician, with the acumen to get us out of the financial chaos.

This time the wayward councillor, in an effort to shift the blame away from his pals in big business, claimed that Mrs Thatcher sold off many of our council houses, and now large private landlords own over a third of all the houses sold!

Now this is pure fantasy! - Mrs Thatcher never sold a single council house to anybody! 

What she did was to introduce the Right to Buy – which allowed sitting tenants to buy their council house at huge discounts; in fact up to half of market value.

Now I know for a fact that many hundreds of people in Tameside benefited greatly from this policy, however, in the late 1980’s, the councillor should remember that many local authorities began selling off their entire housing stocks to existing and specially formed ‘not-for-profit’ companies called ‘Housing Associations’ in the realisation that they would benefit greatly, financially.

So, is the councillor now telling us it was sheer folly for his council to sell of their housing stock to the likes of New Charter and others?

There’s no doubt that Margaret Thatcher’s government introduced the 'right to buy'; in an attempt to undermine Labour councils; but let’s not forget that it was accelerated with a vengeance under Tony Blair and New Labour, because it was they who oversaw the wholesale transfer of the remaining council housing stock to Housing Associations, which was nothing less than back-door privatisation.

What the councillor perhaps doesn’t want us to know is that by 1997, after 18 consecutive years of Conservative rule, home ownership in the UK had expanded from 57% to 68% among British households and, around a quarter of public housing had been privatised, However, public house building had fallen from 75,000 homes a year to just 290 and a £23 billion repair backlog had built up in the remaining council housing sector.

But far from rejecting the policies of its opponents, Tony Blair’s New Labour government embraced them, blocking new council house building, introducing a market consumerist approach to social housing, and seeking to transfer 200,000 homes a year to the Registered Social Landlord (RSL) sector under the cover of bringing all social rented homes up to a (very) minimum ‘decent’ standard by 2010.

These (RSL) companies call themselves social housing landlords, but often, in practice, are closer to property companies, and as we all know here in Tameside, becoming synonymous with fat cat salaries, deteriorating properties and rising rents. Most controversial of all was Labour’s decision to experiment with the infamous Private Finance Initiative (PFI) that saw huge sums of public money diverted to corporate banks, developers, and consultants for regenerating and taking over the running of specific council estates for 30 years.

Here in Tameside, I’d lay odds that we all know someone whose relationship with their ‘social landlord’ is poor. Where their record in repairs is not necessarily one of the best and their responses to queries can be shoddy, if supplied at all.

The councillor then reaches for his crystal ball in an effort to predict the outcome of the 2015 General Election.

Personally, if I was in his shoes, I would be more concerned with the election for the Ward of Dukinfield.

Let’s see what transpires next week. …I predict a move away from politics and back to the History of Dukinfield.