The nice, pleasant, decent left is valorising violence with its silence and excuses

I know it's not all of you but "The Left" as it likes to call itself really does have something of a problem with being extremely unpleasant. And this problem is getting worse not better.

It may not be the biggest of big deals but this rather illustrates the problem:

"The government has blocked a giant statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square over fears it will be vandalised..."

 So it's just a statue of Britain's first woman prime minister - something definitely worth marking in Parliament Square (where, in case you haven't noticed, there aren't many statues of women). But because of that unpleasant faction on "The Left" it isn't going to happen.

The bigger problem with all this is that so many of those nice, pleasant, decent folk who hold left-wing opinions are prepared to make excuses for the sort of people who indulge in this sort of vandalism and worse. You only need to read the story of the attack on Sarah Wollaston's office, listen to Sheryll Murray describing the appalling vandalism and personal attacks in her election campaign, or to run down the Tweets of the Liberal Democrat campaigner in Manchester targeted at four in the morning for the heinous crime of putting up some posters.

Yet every time the response is to swat it away - "every party has these people" - to draw a false parallel between policy disagreements and vandalism or personal attacks ("look at these political campaign posters I don't like") or whataboutery - "here's something nasty that a Tory said fifteen years ago, what about that then". When the extreme left target a Liverpool MP for the terrible crime of being critical of Jeremy Corbyn, targeting that includes appalling anti-semitism and misogyny, those nice, pleasant, decent folk with left-wing views do nothing and say nothing. Every time.

It's true that every party has its share of unpleasant folk but it's also true that only "The Left" valorises vandalism, personal insults, threatening behaviour, intimidation and bullying as campaign methods. And because those nice, pleasant, decent folk with left-wing views don't deal with it - even having the almighty gall to talk about some sort of "kinder" politics - this sort of campaigning continues.

I've said for a long while that our political culture celebrates the bully - you only need watch "The Thick of It" to appreciate this - but we now are in the position where a faction on "The Left" has lifted this unpleasantness and transferred it to the political campaign itself. In forty years as an active political campaigner, I've never known a time when so much unpleasant, personal and downright nasty campaigning has been directed at the good people who hold different political opinions from "The Left".

I know you consider yourself different. You're not part of that left, oh no. But so long as you tolerate, excuse, deflect or explain away violent campaigning, you are little different from the left wing men who are doing the vandalising, performing the intimidation and ganging up on those most exposed and especially women and ethnic minorities.

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Regenerating the North - a start...

There was a small storm when The Economist spoke of the problems facing the more peripheral Northern towns and cities:

The fate of these once-confident places is sad. That so many well-intentioned people are trying so hard to save them suggests how much affection they still claim. The coalition is trying to help in its own way, by setting up “enterprise zones” where taxes are low and broadband fast. But these kindly efforts are misguided. Governments should not try to rescue failing towns. Instead, they should support the people who live in them.

The articles pointed to places like Hull, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough, once thriving places now struggling. The argument is that these places – and the word place is important in this discussion – have got beyond the fixable meaning that we need to manage their continued decline by supporting those who stay and encouraging those who leave.

In one respect this is an understandable, if depressing, conclusion – that places which have contributed so much to England’s glory should be allowed to die. But in other respects the conclusion is liberating.

The efforts aimed at regenerating the North have failed. I know we can point to grand shopping arcades, refurbished mills and many a shiny business park, things that have helped, have provided jobs and have created a sense of economic progress. But the truth is that these things are the fur coat that covers up the absence of underwear. The picture of Liverpool’s brilliant city centre, vibrant with culture, is wonderful. Yet the city still contains some of England’s poorest communities, places unbudged since the jobs went in the 1970s and 1980s.

And, before the wrath of scousers everywhere falls on me, the same picture is seen in Hull, in Teeside and, indeed, in Bradford. Faced with the pull of the South East and the attractions of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle, these communities continue to struggle. Here’s one observer:

Cardiff, Manchester and Newcastle have their stunning new developments and you can tell there are people there with plenty of money just by walking around. Go a few miles up the read, though, and you will find blighted and boarded up small towns. It doesn’t matter how cheap they are, employers are avoiding them. The worse they get, the less likely firms are to relocate. The lure of cheaper property and wages only goes so far. It may tempt organisations away from the South-East but only to the larger regional capitals. Small town Britain is a step too far.

I would go a step further in this understanding – this author suggests that firms may move away from London but only to places with those ‘stunning new developments’ (and I would argue within swift travel of central London – perhaps the only sound argument for HS2). The reality is that – unless, like the BBC, politics forces the move – these firms are not relocating to Leeds, Manchester or Newcastle let alone Bradford, Liverpool or Nottingham.

And the problem is about scale. Here’s a comment about Chicago, a far bigger and more successful city than Leeds, Manchester or Newcastle:

Some may say, “Aaron, weren’t you the one who said Chicago wasn’t a global city?” To which I’d respond, I’ve always said Chicago is a global city. I only think that the global city side of Chicago is not sufficient to carry the load for this gigantic region and state. It can’t even carry just the city, though to be fair if you broke off global city Chicago into a standalone municipality of 600-800,000 like San Francisco, Boston, and DC, it would be a very different story, at the municipal level at least.

In simple terms Aaron is saying that, despite Chicago’s success (the company headquarters, commodities exchanges and cultural excellence), it is not sufficient of an economic driver to drag the wider hinterland – that old rustbelt greater Chicago – along behind. Those communities get left behind.

Back in England, we can see the same in Manchester and Leeds – walk out from Manchester’s city centre and you quickly arrive in places that are the flip side of ‘shiny’ Manchester. Indeed, after Liverpool, Manchester has the highest number of deprived SOAs (‘super output areas’ for the curious). And Leeds with Seacroft, Harehills and East End Park isn’t so very different.

Even these more successful cities may not generate the critical mass to bring peripheral communities along with their thriving centres and odd little bohemian enclaves. If they do, this success will be at the expense of other places further removed and most significantly those sufficiently disconnected – Teeside, East Lancashire, Hull and The Humber.

Faced then with this challenge, what do we do? Right now we’re planning for a larger population, for new jobs in ‘creative’ and ‘knowledge’ industries and for more of the same (or what we believe to be the same). Except this isn’t the case. Quietly we are seeing a new focus – through ‘combined authorities’, local enterprise partnerships and city regions – on the three or four hub cities: Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and, perhaps, Liverpool.

This focus may not be enough (or does there come a point at which London is so expensive, so unattractive that people move away) to prevent continued relative decline but it does at least hold out some prospect of betterment. For us in Bradford – and for that matter, those in Oldham, Chester-le-Street and St Helens – we perhaps need to work out how to do three things:

1. Connect our communities to the City Centres – ideally by fast train or tram rather than by bus or trolley bus. This needs to be ambitious and requires some taboos – about providing free parking at railway stations, for example – to be broken. It’s not enough to simply tidy up the current networks, we need to connect places that aren’t connected as of now
2. Provide transforming space – just because you can get from Saltaire to Leeds inside 20 minutes doesn’t mean you have to do so every day. In these connected places (and especially the deprived communities we’re bringing into the network) let’s offer low rent studios and live-work spaces – on the proviso that those renting put something back in the form of art, music, culture or other improvement
3. Animate and decorate – create a sense of interest and excitement. Rather than some sort of dull positioning – Bradford’s current meme, I’m told, is ‘the producer city’ – we want to be a place where things are happening. But for this to work, we’ll have to let go of control and allow stuff (some of which might be a little odd) to take place.

These aren’t a solution – we can and should expect many of our brightest to go away, to leave for London or even for New York and Hong Kong. And – whatever the planners are saying right now – many of our communities will decline in size, the inner city will hollow out a little and the suburbs will get a little more crowded. But this process presents us with opportunities to do some things differently – to build an urban golf course in Allerton or a cycle track in Barkerend, to have some more new parks and open spaces and to fill them with the wild and wacky.

Rather than sticking our fingers in our ears when faced with (and it’s not the first time) the truth about the prospects for our cities, we should accept reality and work with change instead of pretending it isn’t happening. The alternative is another generation of local politicians (and the pseudo-politicians that clutter up LEP boards and so forth) clattering back and forth to London where they abase themselves before civil servants and junior ministers holding out the cap ready for the next slug of "regeneration".

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Detroit and Liverpool: thoughts on urban renewal

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We've all seen parts of the crisis in Detroit - the bankruptcy of the City government, the abandoned houses you can buy for a few dollars (although nobody does) or the endless chatter about racial strife and political corruption. Not to mention crime, violence and urban decay.

And this is nothing new. People have been commenting on the problems of Detroit since the 1950s with each generation of observers seeing the crisis through the prism of that age's prejudices. And during this time Detroit continued to decline. Fingers are pointed at 'white flight' (let's call it 'jobs sprawl'):

One consequence of this dysfunction has been a severe case of “job sprawl” within the metropolitan area, with jobs fleeing the urban core even when employment in greater Detroit was still rising, and even as other cities were seeing something of a city-center revival. Fewer than a quarter of the jobs on offer in the Detroit metropolitan area lie within 10 miles of the traditional central business district.

The result of this is that Detroit's population has dropped from 1.8 million to just over 700,000 with, inevitably, the better educated, the more entrepreneurial and the more ambitious departing the city.

Everyone points to different urban pathologies as the cause, partly guided by ideological prejudice and partly by whatever is academic flavour of the month in urban studies. Yet we never point the finger at 'regeneration' as the heart of Detroit's problems preferring instead to speak of industrial decline or even Detroit as a sort of municipal buggy whip manufacturer.

So let's look at the 'regeneration' efforts:

For decades it has done the opposite, championing a growth policy that mirrored the city’s overly-centralized private sector. It has gambled—with tax breaks, subsidies, and extensive eminent domain—on stadiums, casinos, office towers, factories, and a downtown monorail, only to find that these didn’t produce nearly the anticipated benefits.

We see here the classic inward investment approach - focus on big 'transformative' projects and provide incentives to developers and favoured businesses. And these inward investment strategies were matched by brutal clearance and community redesign:

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s white mayors steamrolled roadways through functioning black neighborhoods like Black Bottom, and housed the displaced in dangerous, high-rise government projects. Funding for this and other “urban renewal” came from federal programs like President Johnson’s Model Cities, and using Detroit as a flagship, was meant to modernize aging urban communities. 

There's no doubt that racism played a part in Detroit's failure but far more important to that failure was the misplaced belief that the solution - always and every time - lay in securing external finance, public or private, to be directed by the City government or its agents. Every time there is a crisis, out comes the begging bowl and up goes the cries for "more resources" or for "more investment".

Here in England we have been shielded from part of Detroit's problem - rightly or wrongly, local government here doesn't have the unrestricted borrowing power of a US city. But the pattern of urban decline is little different. Take Liverpool, once a great city of empire, now a shadow of its past. This isn't to detract from the efforts - some more successful than others - to reinvent the city and to create a vibrant and dynamic cultural and social heart to Merseyside. But Liverpool still lives with that historic decline:

There are persistently high levels of deprivation in the city and Liverpool remains ranked as the most deprived local authority area in England on the ID 2010, with its position unchanged from the 2004 and 2007 Indices. 

All that 'regeneration' hasn't prevented Liverpool from remaining poor - just as was the case with Detroit. Millions in regeneration funding, economic development cash and a myriad of 'interventions' have left Liverpool just as it was in 1980 - the poorest city in England. And still the clearance continues:

...Liverpool City Council’s planning committee gave the go-ahead to a two-phase hybrid application from housing association Plus Dane Group for the clearance and redevelopment of 5.97 hectares of the Victorian-built terraced houses in the Welsh Streets area, which is part of the Princes Park regeneration zone.

Not only does this approach divide communities and undermine the sense of history in a place but it repeats past errors - and mirrors Detroit's errors - by seeing social investment as a parallel to economic development. People may have a slightly newer house (or some people at least) but they still don't have good prospects of personal economic advancement. Liverpool - despite the investment - remains poor.

And people leave. Since its peak in 1931, Liverpool's population has declined by nearly 50% as people have moved to places with better prospects - some not so far away but others far, far away from the Liver Birds. This is pretty similar to Detroit. Yet we still hear the plaintive cries of the urban leader:

Deputy Mayor, Councillor Paul Brant, said: “You cannot cut your way to growth. In Liverpool we are innovating and investing in schemes that will deliver jobs and economic benefit, whether it’s using our borrowing power to kickstart developments, or to generate new income streams as we have done by purchasing Everton FC’s training ground.

Look at Detroit and ask whether this approach - an approach that has attracted plenty of government cash to Liverpool over the years - will do anything to transform the city? Or, when the next Index of Multiple Deprivation is published, will Liverpool still be England's poorest city?

The sad truth is that the 'regeneration' policies we follow - and continue to follow nationally and locally - are part of the problem not part of the solution. Waiting for the Whitehall fairy to wave the magic funding wand is a fine strategy for council officers and the trooping backwards and forwards to London for meetings gives an illusion of activity but it doesn't help the city, whether that city is Detroit, Liverpool or my city of Bradford.

Here we're rabbiting on about being a 'producer city' which suggests a commitment to business creation and innovation. But, in reality, this is simply repackaging the same old approach - big grand projects that will 'transform' and much about how public investment will lead or draw out private investment. Bradford's not as poor as Liverpool but we have adopted the same strategy as that city - a strategy that echoes the failed approach of Detroit.

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Good time to have an offie in Ormskirk!

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Frank Field - who some in my party seem to like for reasons that almost entirely escape me - has been bouncing with glee at the prospect of a minimum price for alcohol in Merseyside:

Former welfare minister and poverty tsar Frank Field told the ECHO today: “Increasingly in many of our constituencies alcohol is a bigger social problem than drugs – particularly amongst young people.”

The Birkenhead MP added: “It is outrageous that big supermarket chains exploit the situation, selling alcohol below cost to draw in customers and increase their profits.”

I won't bother with trying to set the facts straight for Frank - like most New Puritans (and boy is Frank one of them) the facts are as nothing beside the rhetoric of "it's for the children" and "it costs the NHS". However, like the proposals a while back from the Manchester Diocese of the Church of Public Health, this is just stupid:

Merseyside is set to lead the way by introducing a minimum alcohol price tag.

The proposed 50p per unit cost is intended to stop supermarkets selling cheap booze as loss-leaders fuelling binge drinking amongst local youngsters.

Look, it's pretty simple. According to good old Google Maps it is 14.4 miles from the centre of Liverpool to Ormskirk - a journey taking 28 minutes. So you get in your car and you drive there and go back to Liverpool with your cheap booze. Or maybe the bloke up the road fills his van up with said booze and sells it on to you. Or your cousin Steve in Skelmersdale brings load over when he visits.

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Look, it was a mistake. It was quite funny. Why all the fuss?

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I thought Liverpudlians prided themselves on a sense of humour, on an appreciation of the ridiculous. Well I guess that the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital isn't managed by scousers - although it seems to employ them:

The advert, on the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital's website, invited applications for a trainee anaesthetist.

But it concluded by stating: "Usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc".

Any one who's worked in HR (or in advertising) will know exactly how this came about. And the person responsible will get a bollocking and will bore friends, colleagues and relations for ever with the story (suitably embellished).

However the management have got all po-faced. Rather than have a laugh, say "it's a mistake, sorry folks", they had this to say:

"The wording on this advert in no way reflects the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust's position in relation to equal opportunities, to which it is fully committed.

"The trust is conscious of its duty to promote equality and is a Stonewall Diversity Champion employer.

"The trust will be conducting an investigation into this incident to ensure that this cannot happen again."

For heaven's sake, grow a sense of humour will you.
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Perception...

How we perceive places is often set by what we first encounter. This photograph was taken outside The Grange Club & Community Centre in Pontefract. I guess it's not the first image that springs to mind when thinking of that former mining town.

Rather reminded me that what we think of a place is often guided by what others choose to present to us - good and bad. So Bradford is a riot-ridden city of beards and burkas, Liverpool is a place full of robbing scallies and Pontefract is populated by unhealthy, broken ex-miners.

Just goes to show how wrong we can be and how we should treat media bias (and especially the media's portrayal of the North of England) with contumely.

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Is too much public sector employment strangling Northern cities?

For a long while I’ve felt a little like a lone voice in the wilderness regarding the damage that an over reliance on public sector employment is doing to many of our towns and cities – especially in the North of England. Moving public sector jobs “up north” has been popular with policy-makers wanting to try and fix the decline in traditional manufacturing jobs (so long as it doesn’t include said policy-maker having to relocate from the soft south, of course).

However, the Centre for Cities has now issued a strong challenge to this orthodoxy – arguing in a recent paper, Public Sector Cities: Trouble Ahead that cities are:

“…investing an undue amount of time and resource into competing for a small number of relocating public sector jobs. Promoting private sector growth would be a more sustainable option.”

The paper also reveals just how dependent the economy of some towns is on continuing public sector largess. Eleven towns & cities have more that a third of their work force in the public sector including Liverpool, Oxford and Barnsley. And as the inevitable public spending cuts arrive it will be workers in these places that go ahead of the more proximate Whitehall bureaucrats.

But it’s not just the jobs it’s the squeezing out of enterprise by the dominance of public institutions – nationally there are 415 VAT-registered businesses for every 10,000 people. In Liverpool this figure is just 241, in Barnsley 274 and in Plymouth a measly 233. Since I don’t believe folk in these places are much different from more enterprising places, there has to be cultural and environmental factors leading to this deficit – and the leaden hand of dominant public institutions provides just those factors. Not being enterprising because Dad expects you to go down the pit has been replaced with not creating because there’s an admin job at the DWP.

In truth too much of the North’s economy is made up from public expenditure – by what amounts to a subsidy from the rich South to the poor North. And the result is that the North does not add value – does not earn its share of the nation’s wealth. In 2005/6 public spending and GVA per capita by region related inversely to levels of public spending:

Public Spending % of economy

North East: 61.5; North West: 52.6; Yorkshire:48.9; South East: 33.9; London: 33.4

GVA per capita

North East: 13.5; North West 15.0; Yorkshire 14.9; South East 19.5; London 22.2

In the end places get richer (however you wish to define that idea) because of the enterprise, initiative and creativity of the people who choose to live in that place. Importing soul-less, stifling public sector employers is killing that drive.