A letter to our local Tories
Dear Cllr Mitchell and friends at the county council,
I see your party’s leader, Mr Cameron, has today accepted that inequality between the rich and the poor matters. He even noted in the Guardian (which you may not have seen, so I’ll quote), “there are parts of affluent Oxford, for instance, which rival parts of Liverpool in terms of deprivation”. We’ll forgive him a little hyperbole, but it’s close to the mark.
Mr Cameron (thankfully) doesn’t have any power to put his proposals into action. But you do, running schools, youth services, Sure Starts and social care services for our city. Perhaps, following Mr Cameron’s lead, you could take some action to start implementing the vision: withdrawing the threat to funding for the advice centres on Blackbird Leys and Rose Hill, for example. Picking up the funding slack at the Dovecote Centre for families on Blackbird Leys, maybe. Opening up a bidding cycle for new voluntary youth provision for young people on our estates, perhaps. Or even just making sure someone from the county council turns up at meetings of the regeneration partnership on Rose Hill, like all the other agencies do, perchance.
None of these are state interventions, which I know you’re dubious about. None will change the world, but they’d be a start. And Mr Cameron needs a bit of a boost right now, I gather.
I remain, etc.
“there are parts of affluent Oxford, for instance, which rival parts of Liverpool in terms of deprivation”.
For instance Woolton and Grassendale, the least deprived wards in Liverpool, are rivalled by Cowley Marsh and Churchill in Oxford.
The most deprived wards in Oxford, Blackbird Leys and Northfield Brook, rival Aigburth and Gillmoss, which are in the least deprived 25% in Liverpool.
So we have a problem here, is the conclusion:
1) Deprivation is relative, even within quite small geographic areas, or;
2) The IMD isn’t a terribly good way of measuring deprivation, or;
3) David Cameron doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I have some sympathy with all of these positions. As to the rest, good luck, though the notion that County Councils run schools is one I wish the Government (or indeed Headteachers) shared.
I suggested to the Oxfordshire Tories that they should focus on reducing inequality and use a targeted approach to tackling deprivation when we were working on putting together a Local Area Agreement. They rolled their eyes, chortled, and explained patiently that they weren’t socialists, they were Tories, and hence they thought that inequality was a jolly good thing and that it was a bad idea to try to reduce it.
I take it as a small victory in the Battle of Ideas that David Cameron is now claiming that his political priorities are inspired by the Oxford City Council Social Inclusion Strategy, though I don’t think Kaiser Keith and chums will take much notice.
a fine letter.
I’m you’re in London come and help in the Shadwell by election.
The Left will never win the ‘Battle of Ideas’, because history has proven socialism NEVER works.
IN responce to C4′ B.A. (Hons.)
“The Left will never win the ‘Battle of Ideas’, because history has proven socialism NEVER works.”
I completely agree thats why new labour is just hipocrisy. full of hypocrites most of the party started their political careers of as communists and suddenly when “NEW labour” was created over night they’ve become capitalists. The conservatives have to modernise and liberalise to an extent but when labour modernised they had to scrap all of the polices and abandon their principles and that had to liberalise too because in the 80s they were seen as radicals.
so thats why i agree with C4′ B.A. (Hons.)