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Austerity is already biting those at the bottom of the pile
THE prospect of the coming years of austerity is exercising the main political parties but to many people it seems as if they have already arrived.
These are the people down below – the jobless teenagers, the neglected elderly and the families who fear they will never have a home of their own.
What do you say to families staring at the sky-high 17,000-long waiting list for homes in the borough?
Though our elected representatives delude themselves into believing things are under control, in fact, they are effectively going round in circles trying to keep the Camden ship seaworthy.
To a large extent they cannot be blamed.
If they could raise taxes free from interference from Whitehall, if all local business rates were allowed to flow back into the Town Hall treasury as once they did before the 1980s, if planning, health and education were free of the strangling constraints of big government . . . but all these are big “ifs”.
Big Brother at Downing Street rules.
On the bottom rung local councillors scurry around doing their best.
But they don’t help matters by trying to make up for financial constraints by hanging a Camden For Sale notice over the borough in an attempt to raise funds.
It seems that once the order was given by the Lib-Dem-Tory coalition to sell properties, the higher and middle-ranking officials began to haul houses and flats into the net destined for auction.
It has almost become a case of “anything goes”.
Meanwhile, cuts that save comparatively small sums are applied to essential services for the elderly and for young people.
We question whether this makes sense when, at the other end, huge sums of money are annually thrown at consultants for schemes that senior Town Hall officials should be quite capable of conceiving themselves – as would have happened in the days when the ethos of public service reigned unchallenged in municipal government.
Despite the noises at the Brighton Labour Party conference this week, the Treasury in Whitehall will be preparing to sell off public assets to reduce the swollen national debt.
Unhappy Camden Labourites lobbied the housing minister John Healey to stop Camden council’s big sale in its tracks. But is he prepared to make up for this by handing over equivalent funds to allow the council to modernise its estates?
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