|
|
 |
| |
Tragic consequences of cost cutting
IT is a great tragedy in itself that it takes the tragic death of two-year-old Saurav Ghai to focus the minds of councillors and officials alike on their responsibilities.
For years the council has been warned that it is asking for trouble if it allows its teams of inspectors to be run down.
An accountant’s pen can cut costs with ease. A committee of thoughtless members can bumrush all kinds of economies through.
Heavy, indigestible reports, in impenetrable language, can hide unpleasant facts. But in the end truth will out. Unfortunately, it is not the councillors or the officials who pay. But those at the receiving end – council tenants, the elderly in care, those who cannot fend for themselves. Since the onset of Thatcherism in the 80s, and its sequel in the form of Blairism, many council services have been run down in the name of sound budgets and economic commonsense.
Though this government has allowed more expenditure on the refurbishment of council estates than the Lib Dems and Tories wish to recognise, the fact remains that New Labour does not believe in public housing.
Ever since the council’s own building department was wound up in the early 90s, and reliance began to be placed more and more on private sub-contractors, the standard of repairs, as well as the vigil exercised by inspectors, once known as Clerks of Works, all this has gone downhill.
Witness the recent tragedy at a Mornington Crescent high-rise block where a worker was electrocuted, or, only a few years ago, the employment of cowboy plumbing firms who installed faulty gas boilers, the evidence slowly laps up against the Town Hall.
But instead of confronting the enemy, council officials, backed up by tip-toeing councillors, more interested in their careers than in serving the public, the retreat is sounded.
Here we come to a particular poisonous mind-set that officialdom hides behind. It arranges – without any compunction – for workmen to empty the personal life belongings of a 92-year-old woman (See page 5). We could find no next-of-kin, says a council spokesman. Yet, had they knocked on the door of her neighbour, details of her grandson would have quickly emerged.
Again, protesters plead with Lib Dem deputy leader, Flick Rea, to put-off the suddenly announced closure of Kentish Town baths for a short-time, and they are ignored – without any disclosure of facts, figures and reports to sustain the decision.
Does the public deserve what it gets? |
 |
|
|
|
