Defending public service...

Today’s Guardian is running an article about “EasyCouncil” , Barnet, as it is adopting a budget-airline approach to public services, where residents can pay extra for jumping the queue for planning consent or decide to spend a care allowance on a cleaner, respite care or a holiday to Eastbourne.

Of course the London Borough of Barnet is considered to be a shining example of “New Conservatism” and it is showing clear signs that it is developing a new form of Thatcherism, something the Conservative Party cannot seem emancipate itself from. Furthermore, Barnet is intending to make huge efficiency savings by outsourcing services to save £15 million a year, or as I like to call it – throwing away hard working staff to the private sector. I fail to understand why councillors and some council officers believe destroying careers, demoralising staff and breaking-up the ethos of public service is good for a community. May I remind the councillors that make these decisions that some efficiency savings of their own could be made in council functions, twinning trips, drinks, food and IT equipment, not to mention the allowances, perks, outside bodies and their basic salary.

Capital is making bolder steps to further dismantle public services and the morality, and it is morality, of the wealthiest paying the most to support the less well off. We have recently seen attacks on the NHS and this is just the beginning. Labour has monumentally failed to be bold enough to weaken the Conservative Party when it was at its most vulnerable and now we could be faced with a further dismantling of the state. We are NOT the US and I don’t want to live in the USA.

What is also apparent is that the Labour Party no longer represents the voice of the weak, the powerless and the poor in the minds of voters. It is a hard job for me to convince them that we do, eventhough the NHS is alive and kicking despite the greed of drug companies, the private sector and the wolves at the door in Conservative clothing; eventhough crime is down and as a society we are happier; eventhough a lot of the Thatcherite policies of dismantling the welfare state, have in-part, been stopped for now. I am not blaming anyone but the Labour Party for this, but it needs to pick-up the standard of the poor, of the powerless, of the weak and the ordinary citizen, now. Just as climate change has to be stopped, so does the breakdown of the belief in democracy. Tony Benn has said time and time again, that it is democracy that has made social progress, as power shifted from the rich to the poor. Only when power was attainable by convincing the working class, and I use this term to represent ordinary people, to vote for you, did we get pensions, housing, sanitation, education, health care and emancipation. If voters become more and more disillusioned and more apathetic, then these hard-fought for victories will be lost.

I have said before that the government should be afraid of its people and not the other way round. Voting is crucial to prevent the power of “Capital” dominating our lives and restricting health care, education and life to the richest in society. The last thing the councillors in Barnet want is a well educated, intelligent electorate, nor the neo-liberals, hiding in all the mainstream parties.

Many voters now see that non-mainstream parties are now the defence against this Barnet New Conservatism. I disagree, not because I wear my Labour Party membership like a battle dress, but simply because without proportional representation, the defence will be too weak. For now, the Labour Party is the only defence in the general election and in Lewisham.