Though Cowards Flinch

During a recent event on social care, Barbara Keeley MP, Chair, All Party Parliamentary Group for Social Care, addressed an audience saying that the issue of social care, particularly funding, was a known issue among MPs, but nothing is being heard about it.

Further, they know it is an issue among the public themselves, particularly those who are often left caring for elderly relatives and juggling employment as well. Or even those who have to leave employment altogether.

Though, even in the age of internet campaigns, which really do work, not much is coming through on this subject. This is perhaps reflected in the weak plans by government to draw up a mere draft bill, which is rumoured not to even touch upon the glaring issue of funding – something which even with a cost cap, through the Dilnot review, will still see people spending a lot of money on the care they or their relatives receive.

There is another implication, that so often gets forgotten. That of the cost implications to unpaid, full-time carers. Dr Linda Pickard of the LSE put it in the following way:

Providing unpaid care to older people and people with disabilities is costly. Many unpaid carers leave employment and experience costs to themselves in terms of foregone earnings. However, initial findings from a new study at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) now show that carers leaving employment also involves high costs to the public purse. The study shows that the public expenditure costs of carers leaving employment in England amount to around £1.3 billion a year.

The implication thus being that if more money was put into social care, this would provide a counterbalance to the amount that is lost in tax receipts through people leaving their jobs to take up full-time care; not to mention the amount of money it costs employers to re-train other staff members on the back of this.

But sadly this is just another example of where short-term spending worries are given primacy over long-term savings and efficiency – or the spend to save model as it’s popularly known.

My ambitious appeal to readers is in tweeting this post to MPs, councillors and interested charities, social enterprises, private companies etc, to try and feed this issue back onto the desks of our elected senior representatives. Also it is an appeal to the Avaaz / 38 degrees-type campaigns that can engage the already-concerned public and raise this extremely important issue back to the top of the agenda again – before the problem only gets worse for social care.

A litter of Labour’s known online commentators have decided not to put Ken as their first option in the mayoral elections today, one deciding to vote Green with a tactical eye on granting Livingstone his second preference, while the other this morning decided to accept a blue rosette given to him and do Boris’ counting with activists.

Various Lords have given Ken the snub, MPs are not actively out campaigning for him and some well-known journalists such as Jonathan Freedland long ago decided that Livingstone and the Jewish question was a touch too far.

I agree this should be near the top of our heads when voting for a mayor. After all the Mayor of London engages with international figures and therefore has to have a rigorous internal conversation about how to conduct oneself on matters of world political issues.

The meeting, therefore, with Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi plays havoc. Further, Ken’s present failure to recognise a problem here gives us reason never to trust him again, let alone trust him with political office.

But also the recent “beacon of Islam” political theatre, along with dalliances with PressTV, under rule of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s clan of autocratic criminals, doesn’t sit well alongside his comments that Jews are “rich” and “wouldn’t vote for him anyway.”

Why does he feel the need to say he’ll make London a “beacon of Islam” anyway? At best that was the foulest form of political posturing; at worst it is divide and rule politics.

All these things should give us reason to kick up a fuss – but as Ken is “our man” we should keep Mum, lest we tread on our own supposedly tribal instincts.

The Economist in their recent editorial, supporting Boris, said that the Blonde blue candidate is the right candidate for the wrong job, and that the role of mayor should cover far more important ground.

I agree, but obviously not for Boris. But, then, not for Ken either.

Peter Hain, in his recent autobiography, said:

…I wanted to be effective, to be able to make a real difference. And that meant learning what not to do from Ken Livingstone … he seemed to go out of his way to make enemies…

And this holds true today. A London mayor should not be one whose sole aim it is to make enemies, in fact the opposite is true.

If Ken becomes mayor again, which he very much could do tomorrow, then he is more likely to stand next time. Even more, if he wins, the Labour party will find it nearly impossible to throw him out – and I think it’s time they did.

Ken isn’t simply a renegade who cannot be tamed, but his politics and demeanor have become embarrassing and offensive. And we haven’t even raised the tax situation, yet.

There is also something in what Andrew Gilligan, another ex-PressTV partner in crime with links to the Father of Syria’s President Assad, said recently, on what would happen if Ken lost:

If Ken loses again this week, in a city where Labour is currently 19 per cent ahead in the polls, Labour will have no option but to face all these realities.

Boris on the other hand will use a mayoral reelection to further boost his designs on Conservative party leader.

(Could we foresee a lightbulb fight between Yvette Cooper and Boris Johnson yet?)

Boris is clearly not in this for the right reasons, whereas Ken thinks he is doing the right thing, really means it, and is often left looking foolish as a result.

Dan Hodges probably has this right: it is a fight between Ken and Boris. That seems obvious. But he is wrong to support the latter.

I can’t say anything other than vote Ken. I’m not tribal, it’s just I don’t want to see Boris back as Mayor. But I’ll be honest nor do I want to see Ken back either. Sadly, there is no other way. Vote Ken, then insist he is sacked immediately. This inharmonious position seems to be all we have in the sensible camp. I blame politics.

This government must be broken in two by concerted, massive and uncompromising strike action. Anyone who says differently is a do-nothing, who wants to stand around bloviating instead of actually getting behind the one tactic which can stop the cuts. Even those people who are electoralists – i.e. Labour Party types – can’t argue with this. We’re not likely to see an election until 2015, according to Cameron and Clegg, so it’s up to the activists.

Even those who argue that we can’t oppose the cuts wholesale and can only separate out individual cuts can’t argue with the pension campaigns. The teachers and civil servants pension funds were both many millions in the black. The government decided to rob these funds, and to force teachers and other public servants to work longer, get less and pay more for what they got, when there was absolutely zero justification to do so, however the Tories spin it. More than that though, the working class doesn’t operate on legalistic principles – there’s no argument that since we’re striking about pensions, that’s all we care about. The battle lines are legion; the slicing up of the NHS, privatisation elsewhere, lowering taxes on the rich while screwing the poor, rising class sizes and falling child care facilities, not to mention massive unemployment spurred on by the Tory budgets.

Unions like Unite and Unison opted to stand aside from the dispute, after the N30 strikes, leaving PCS at the core of a group of unions the best activists of which not only want to organise their own unions but want to throw down the gauntlet to Len McCluskey, Dave Prentis, Brendan Barber and the other backsliders. Our activists and the activists in those unions which have not opted for more coordinated strikes will work together, under the banner of the National Shop Stewards Network, to force those unions to act in the interests of their members – which in the immediate dispute are not served by the Heads of Agreement to which Prentis and Barber and co wanted to sign up, and which in the medium term will never be served by a Tory government, whatever their window dressing.

That group of fighting unions just got bigger, with the National Union of Teachers and the NASUWT both voting for more concerted strikes. This will be a massive boost to the morale and resolve of the NSSN ahead of their national conference on 9th June. There will be deep debates as to how best to ensure first that we get good turnout on the days, and second that we park deep in the massive unions like Unite and Unison our iron determination to continue to fight, a determination we believe many of the members there either share already or would share if they had a trustworthy leadership and were presented with an alternative to simply accepting the cuts as fait accompli.

As a member of my PCS branch, I’ll be looking to get delegated to the NSSN conference and so should you. The more union branches represented there, the more thorough any discussion is likely to be. I’m also fighting to get cooperation from other unions in the place where I work, with joint meetings and real discussions about how best they can support us when we’re on strike and what they can expect from us in return, in their own disputes which management, which are many. I’ll be trumpeting the NUT and NASUWT vote to buoy up morale amongst PCS members.

As a member of the Socialist Party, I’ll be on the streets of Canterbury fighting to get the wider working class involved. I’ll be lobbying the Canterbury and Dover & Folkestone Trades Councils to organise joint public demonstrations and to build for them, rather than simply announcing the strikes and activities and expecting members to turn up as so many of the most bureaucratic union leaders do – a tactic which leaves the unions looking weak and which often confirms those union leaders’ own insecurities about what support they have behind them.

That is something that needs addressed on every level; email lists are far from enough engagement with members – and the reliance on those email lists or one-off face to face activities to instill in our colleagues and comrades the political education to match their instincts is simply not acceptable.

Thursday and Friday’s Days of Action in Canterbury and Gravesend, which Kent Socialist Party organised with Youth Fight for Jobs, suggested to me that though things looked a little wobbly just recently, fightback 2o12 is far from dispensed with, such are the levels of anger with this government. The NUT and NASUWT votes confirm it. All socialists must now play their role as leaders of their communities, of their workplaces and unions and of their class, and push for joint action, exerting maximum pressure to get our allies in Unison and Unite back into the fight. Hopefully the few comrades still in Labour know that and are ready for it.

As disappointing as it may be to some long-time blogofriends, who really despise him, I am resolutely indifferent to George Galloway. This might be seen as some political lapse on my part. After all, only the other week I was expressing my sympathy for Peter Cruddas, the Tory apparatchik caught trying to sell access to our dearly beloved PM.

Even so, when reading the headlines over my cornflakes today, I did laugh very hard indeed at Galloway’s absolutely massive victory in Bradford West. I laughed harder still at the lightning speed responses from Labour people on Twitter, which amounted to “Bloody [insert ethnic or religious minority]“. I’m not joking there. That’s really what it came down to.

Let me clarify. A lot of people are talking about the “machine politics” practised by some Asian communities, and suggesting that Galloway has appeased the powers that be there, to win the votes they can command – a little like Tammany Hall. It is entirely possible that Galloway benefitted here (and I make no claim to authority in the matter) but it is rather hypocritical for Labour to attack it, as if it is true that Galloway benefits from it, then in many areas Labour also benefits from it. Or the whole conception might be a vaguely racist appraisal by people who stand outside those communities.

In any case, an 18,000 strong vote, based on slogans like “Real Labour not New Labour”, “Stop this Cuts Madness” and “Stop the Break Up of the NHS” (as well as the expected “Bring Our Boys Home” tropes), is not easily dismissed.

I am not a Respect supporter; I think they are a dead-end, and I think Galloway is an unaccountable, uncontrollable celebrity personality, rather than the sort of local campaigner I’d be more comfortable voting for (see TUSC for further details). But in the Bradford West by-election there was no one else to vote for, if deciding purely on the basis of what the candidates said in their electoral material, which is presumably the only contact most people had with the matter.

The key question is, having won this by-election, what is Galloway going to do now? Those who enjoy ridiculing him have made much of  his Celebrity Big Brother shenanigans, as being “disrespectful” to his constituents etc etc. Again I’m seized by indifference over the matter – though it might give a tell-tale indication as to what sort of MP Galloway might be. It bears saying, however, that as with the “machine politics” stuff, Labour people voicing their discontent are somewhat hypocritical. I’m sure Ed Miliband would jump on any TV show going if he thought he would win the election as a result – only he’d probably have to call in at Hackett’s for a bespoke personality and not just his usual custom-made suits.

Is Galloway, on the other hand, being the darling of the media because he seems immune to embarrassment, going to run a media-luvvy orientated campaign henceforth, or is he going to be in Bradford High St, manning the anti-cuts stalls? He should be. Such a high profile victory, allied to the right campaigning strategy, could galvanise the whole working class of Bradford to come out and fight the cuts. There are practical tasks at stake; the coordination of local union action, the preparation of anti-cuts candidates for council, on a “needs-budget” slate, and the extension of cooperative efforts to other nearby areas, such as Leeds, where the cuts are biting just as hard.

A high profile figure can lend weight to that strategy, which is really the only strategy.

Is that to be George Galloway’s role? We don’t yet know, so we don’t yet know what the significance of this by-election will be. We know it shows discontent – but whether or not that discontent can be turned from a passive kind, that results in one-off by election votes, into an active kind that will defeat the cuts…therein lies the real question mark over Bradford. Everywhere on the Left can be felt Labour’s ebb, particularly from those unions which move into struggle whilst Ed Miliband talks about “resolution at any cost” (which means “at any cost to workers”, as we know from experience).

What force will replace it is still up for debate – and replace it something will. Bradford notwithstanding, Labour are still the main repository for the votes of the passive resistance. As workplaces move into active struggle, Labour people find themselves standing by the wayside. People don’t forget that the pickets of the last year or so were not that long ago pickets erected against the policies of a Labour government. Moreover, that active struggle demands answers which Labour cannot supply. The election of a Labour government is only the end of Round One in the battle against the cuts – the battle against capitalism.

Round two will be the creation, through the struggle against that Labour government and its equally repugnant cuts, of the organs of an alternative, unifying and representative seat of working class power.

In Bradford, the local paper reported in 2009 that 41% percent of the areas in the district are among the most deprived in the country. Labour people can do all the whinging they want about machine politics – but there are very good reasons for the people in this area not to vote Labour; a Labour council, tarred by Galloway with the same cuts-loving brush as the Tories, could not save a Labour candidate from being absolutely annihilated. That is telling enough as to the continuing abysmal state of the Labour Party.

Lastly, the Lib-Dems apparently lost their deposit. May there be heaps more of that, thank you very much.

I had a brief twitter conversation with Rupert Read, a Green party councillor from Norfolk.  Rupert was promoting an online petition:

Philip Hardy: Stand down as councillor for Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk.

The petition site explains:

Philip Hardy is the county councillor for the Thorpe Hamlet area. If you voted for him it would have been as a Green Party candidate. He has now, shockingly, defected to the conservatives, without standing down and putting himself up for re-election. Which means the Thorpe Hamlet voters have effectively voted for the Conservatives. The Green party won 46.16% of the vote whilst the Conservatives won 19.29%. Please circulate this to as many people in Norfolk as possible to put pressure on their representatives to force a by-election.

I googled, found a recent LibDem to Green defection welcomed by Hampshire Green party, and asked Rupert:

Out of interest, Rupert, do you think Alan Weeks should resign [fight by-election]?  A genuine question whether you think the two cases are different.

Rupert replied:

It’s a fair question, and here’s the answer: No. The difference is that the LibDems have betrayed themselves. Defections from LibDems to Greens (or to Labour, for that matter) are reasonable. But there is no excuse for going Green-Con.

The obvious reaction to this argument from Rupert would be to accuse the Green party of double standards, and I suspect this is the response that most people would give.  However, I think Rupert has a point which is worth exploring.

By arguing that the two cases are different because the LibDems are worse than Greens, Rupert is effectively making a case for the application of the first part of Rawls’ Second Principle of Justice:

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are a) to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society; b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (Rawls, 1971, A Theory of Justice , p.302).

That is, Rupert argues that the potential damage done to the least advantaged in society by the Norwich Green’s defection to the Conservatives – because Greens are interested in this group and because  Conservatives do bad things to it - makes it a separate case from a LibDems-to-Green defection, which will be good for disadvantaged people.  Social justice, therefore, is best served by an unequal arrangement; Green-to-Tory defectors should face by-election, but LibDem-to-Green defectors should not.

This is a reasonable argument, and not dissimilar to the one I made when I argued that socialists shouldn’t simply accept the idea of equal-sized constituencies as a ‘no-brainer’, because what liberals would have us believe are unjust inequalities in constituency size are actually socially just, in the Rawlsian sense, in that their very ineqaulity of size is of benefit to the otherwise least advantaged.

There are, however, arguments to be made against Rupert’s Rawlsianism.

First, and most obviously, it depends on Rupert being right about the LibDems having “betrayed themselves” and that there’s “no excuse” to defect from Green to Tory.  Clearly a LibDem/Tory is likely to argue the reverse – that if Rawlsian justice is pursued it’s the Hampshire LibDem-to-Green who should be standing down, and the Norfolk Green-to-Tory who is acting in the interests of the poor by staying put, because he’ll be in a position to put in place sensible local authority measures to benefit the most disadvantaged in the longer term.

That is, Rupert is favouring a system of justice which depends upon one side or other’s capacity to provide a convincing, but necessarily contestable, narrative about what is and what isn’t in the interests of the most disadvantaged.  He favours this over the rules currently in force (as there is no requirement for any defecting councillor to fight a by-election) which are set independent of any Rawlsian considerations.

He may be correct ethically, but this stance has complications.  For one thing, it sets a precedent for the application of Rawlsian methods which might be employed at a later time when Conservative forces are able to impose their own narrative more effectively (and they can already so pretty well); as such the negative unintended consequences for the most disadvantaged may end up greater than the positive ones he now envisages.  What may be right ethically may be wrong tactically.

More fundamentally, Rupert’s stance depends upon a particular conception of the grounds on which councillors are elected in the first place which in itself actually militates against the most disadvantaged.

Rupert’s argument is that Philip Hardy was elected as Green party councillor and that for him subsequently to become a Conservative renders the previous votes in some way invalid.  Yet, Philip Hardy was not elected as a Green party councillor.  He was elected primarily as the person in his ward deemed most able to carry out the role, and who used his Green party membership, and profession of alignment with Green policies, as some proof of this during his campaign.

That is to say, he was elected as a representative of his ward constituents, not as a Green party delegate.  The fact that he feels he can now best represent his constituents by adopting a totally different set of policies may be bizarre and reprehensible, but it does not make his election invalid.

To argue this is not to argue against the usefulness of party politics of a the most effective way of administering representative government (I happen to think it is the best way).  It is, though, an argument against representative government as it is currently conceived and implemented, with its confused picture as to whom representatives actually represent. 

More appropriate in the longer term, and in the pursuit of Rawlsian justice, is a system of delegatory democracy, under which those elected to serve know precisely who they serve, and (within agreed limits of discretion) how they will serve, because constituency and ‘party’ are effectively the same thing.   This, in turn, creates a democratic space in which assertions on how best to meet Rawlsian aims of social justice can be more properly contested, because function (what to do) takes precdence over form (the rules of democracy).  GDH Cole had a point in Guild Socialism Restated.

None of this means that Philip Hardy, the Tory councillor for Thorpe Hamlet, is anything other than a conniving scumbag who has put his own interests before those of the people of Thorpe Hamlet.

Tory-run Wandsworth Council is proposing to evict people who don’t get a job.  The council says:

If the policy is adopted, people would be given a council home on the condition that they find work or enrol on a training course. If they fail to stick to their side of the bargain they would face the prospect of losing that home.

This comes in the context of government policy being developed to evict people if they do get a job:

The PM said fixed term contracts should be issued so that people can be evicted if they get a job or start earning more.

Lord Hanningfield, the Tory peer released from jail in September after serving time for expenses fraud, has been on the radio as a first step in his rehabilitation:

I am pretty much destitute. I have never had that much money…I am now going to have real, real problems for the rest of my life surviving.

Some may feel the term “destitute” a little strong given that, as soon as he is eligible to return to the Lords in May 2012, he will be able to claim a tax-free £300 for every Lords’ sitting day, alongside other legitimate expenses. But I suppose he may feel destitution is relative.

Fair enough.  He has “paid his debt” to society and should be able to get on with his life.  If truth be told, I’ve always had the feeling that he was just the unlucky one that got found out treating his accommodation entitlement as a regular per diem whether or not he stayed over in London.  Like him, I suspect there were plenty more at it who didn’t end up serving time.

What interests me especially, though, is whether Lord Hanningfield’s newly acquired poverty will lead him to reassess the very detailed plans he had been making, as leader of Essex County Council right up to his arrest in 2009, to drive thousands of genuinely poor people in Essex towards utter destitution.

That plan was, if you remember, for the County Council to use the local freedoms provided under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, and to take full control of the welfare benefits system; the Council would then tighten eligibility criteria and reduce benefit rates in order to redraw, for Essex economic conditions, the balance between a ‘decent standard of living’ and ‘an incentive to find work’.

In other words, Lord Hanningfield’s plan was to starve the poor in the name of ideology.

Now, that plan did not go away with Lord Hanningfield’s resignation from the Council and subsequent fall from grace.   While Labour’s Sustainable Communities Act has faded into the background, pretty well the same provisions have been set out in the General Power of Competence section of Localism Bill. Essex County Council were quick off the mark in support of this aspect of the bill, and made the connection explicit:

We are keen that the Secretary of State must consult and try to reach agreement with local authorities on the scope of any restrictions. This would ensure that central government moves to alter local powers would be subject to similar criteria as local action to change central government behaviour under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Memorandum submitted by Essex County Council, February 2011)

The Localism Bill will have Royal Assent by the end of 2011, and from the tone of this memorandum, it looks as though Lord Hanninfield’s erstwhile Tory colleagues in Essex are keen to drive through what started under his leadership.

Lord Hanningfield says now:

I just want to get on and use the experience I have had over the past two to three years for the benefit of others.

It will be interesting to see if this new desire to benefit others will include a reappraisal of his plans to make thousands of his fellow Essex citizen destitute, and public opposition to their introduction.

If he does that, I’ll certainly support his rehabilitation in the Lords.

In November 2009, Cameron promised, in writing:

[T]he next Conservative Government will introduce a “community right-to-buy”….. This means that local people and organisations will be given first refusal to take over community amenities for the benefit of the community.

He was lying.

Yesterday, The Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, wrote to the ’third sector’, and told them:

 [T]he Localism Bill provides radical new rights and powers for citizens and communities, not least the Right to Buy….

He was lying too.

The Localism Bill, now making its way from the Lords back to the Commons and on to Royal Assent, makes no mention of the a ‘community right to buy’; indeed the word ‘buy’ appears nowhere in the bill.

What Ch. 4, paras. 75-96 of the Localism Bill actually do is set out arrangements whereby communities can bid for ‘assets of community value’, but at no point is a right to buy – Cameron’s ‘first refusal’ – accorded.

This is perfectly clear in the consultation document on the bill’s provisions put out by government in February:

The provisions also introduce a window of opportunity for community groups, once a listed asset comes up for sale, in order to give them valuable time to organise and fundraise, so putting them in a better position to compete with other potential buyers (para 1.17).

Certainly there is scope for owners to sell to community groups ahead of other interested bidders at a lower price if they wish to (see para. 11.6), but there is absolutely no compulsion.

Furthermore, this provision is aimed explicitly (para 11.8) at local authorities and other public bodies, and they already have that discretionary power under the Local Government Act 1972 (General Disposal Consent 2003), which allows them to dispose of assets at less than market value where there is clear community benefit.

On Monday, the Tory Baroness Hanham successfully put amendments to the bill  (p.74 of Hansard record) which further restrict communities’ right even to bid for assets, because this right might interfere with rich people’s inheritance tax avoidance plans.

Yet even before that, the whole idea that communities would have any greater ‘right to buy’ than they ever had before was a simple Tory lie. 

It’s a lie that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

Chris Dillow has a really good post up on ‘the revenge effect’, taking as its hook the discovery of the CIA/MI6′s torture outsourcing to specialist firm Gadaffi Inc.:

An apparently humanitarian policy by the west has, therefore,  exposed its earlier lack of humanitarianism. Pessimists might add that this could mean that in supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi, the west has helped install a regime which has a grudge against us. These are examples of what Edward Tenner called the revenge effect - how our actions can rebound to bite us on the arse.

Chris gives us several other examples of arse-biting policy decisons, with his main focus on economic policy, but he left out the most salient recent example.

Back in the 19650s and 1960s, both Conservative and Labour governments, in collaboration with willing councils, pursued overtly racist housing, employment and education policies towards the people then immigrating from South Asia and the West Indies.

At the time, a sociologist who did have the “cognitive resources” needed to ”anticipate revenge effects” (which Chris says policy makers lack), said:

We have just about ten years to break down our ghettoes and to see to it that all men have the same opportunities in education and employment…The difficulties we face do not arise from our ignorance about how the problem should be tackled.  They arise from a lack of will or from opportunist electoral fear.  Yet trying to placate the electorate with semi-racialist policies, or keeping quite in the hope that you won’t be called a nigger-lover hasn’t paid off, while a deliberate assault on the ghettoes with a view to clearing them would eliminate one of the most important of all the secondary causes of racialism….. 

If we can now deal with those problems which are the secondary causes of racialism we may still be able to go on to create an unprejudiced generation”.

That didn’t happen, and 10 years later the same sociologist said:

[T]here are clear difference of life-chances between them and the white British…….Such differences of life-chances, if they were sustained over a period, would undoubtedly mean that consciousness of a common identity, common exploitation and oppression, and a common conflict with the host society would emerge and find expression in some kind of ethnic-class-for-itself.

But if this is true for the immigrant generation it is much more true for its children……Not merely is it the case, therefore, that immigrant class-consciousness will be reinforced with time by the mere repetition of the same experiences, but it will also be related to the consciousness which emerges amongst the young who have rising expectations not shared by their parents, and who are likely to be more fiercely frustrated by the experiences of discrimination.

That was in 1979. In 1981 these frustrations led to the summer riots.  30 years later, the frustrations were expressed differently both by grandchildren of immigrants and by a newer set of young people who have been at the receiving end of systematic discrimination.

None of this will be a surprise to John Rex, the sociologist who told us what would happen.  However belatedly, Cameron and (more likely) Miliband would do well to read Rex’s work and then address the real root causes of the recent “pure criminality”.

I know that pretty well everyone inhabiting the blogosphere logs on to Though Cowards Flinch as soon as they wake up in the morning, desperate for an update on two vitally important Freedom of Information requests I have in train.  So here’s a quick update.

1.  Lancashire County Council/BT contract (back story here and here)

 17 May 2011: FOI request made

I wish to request, under Freedom of Information legislation, a full copy of the contract between Lancashire County Council and BT as it pertains to the Joint Venture Company, One Connect Ltd.
 
In reviewing my request, you may want to take into account the Information Commissioner’s recent decision to order the publication of the contract between Liverpool City Council and BT in respect of the Liverpool Direct Joint Venture Company.

14 June : Reply from LCC stating that extension on 20 day time limit needed in order to conduct public interest test. Deadline for reply 14 July

15 July:  Follow up from me chasing reply, and reply from LCC saying views of BT being sought and apologising for delay

18 July: Reply from LCC saying reply of 15 July was wrong and that BT views are being examined by LCC legal services

01 August: Follow up from me asking about progress (unanswered)

24 August: Follow up from me requiing subsantive reply by 26th August, failing which formal complaint about Council misconduct will be made, along with direct approach to Information Commissioner on basis that Council have not acted reasonably.

2.  Regional Growth Fund funding application and scoring criteria (BIS) (back story and details here)

20 April 2011: FOI request made

I wish to make a request for information under the Freedom of Information legislation. Please provide:

1) Copies of all funding applications that were successful in attracting Regional Growth Funds, as announced on Tuesday 24th March 2011.

2) A copy of any assessment and scoring criteria used by the Regional Growth Fund panel used to decide which applications should be funded.

3) Any correspondence from BIS and the Western Morning News in relation to this organisation’s application to the Regional Growth Fund.

24 May: Reply from BIS stating that extension on 20 day time limit needed in order to conduct public interest test. Deadline for reply 22  June

22 June: Reply from BIS turning down sections 1 and 2 of the FOI request (section 3 complied with).

05 July: I request internal review of BIS decision, on these grounds.

24 August: I chase internal review process and receive immediate reply giving second week of September as expected response time.