Monthly Archives: November 2010

Lewisham protests

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All on tonight at a Lewisham council meeting where councillors gathered to vote on a nasty and very controversial programme of cuts in this most deprived of boroughs.

Locals have long been furious at Lewisham mayor Steve Bullock’s perceived willingness to offer local services to Osborne’s scythe.

“It would be easy to declare our opposition to the cuts the coalition is proposing,’ Sir Steve told us at the council’s AGM way back in June.

It’s even easier, it seems, to put up no opposition at all. Locals have gone mad at Bullock’s proposals to cut libraries, refuse services and staff (especially in a borough that depends on council for employment to the extent this one does). As early as June, Lewisham had bullocked ahead and forecast a budget gap of up to £60m for 2011 to 2014 (although though it was still in the dark about government plans for key grants). People expect (for reasons that will forever escape me) a little more from Labour. It has been clear for a while that Sir Steve ought to keep an eye on the tide.

This evening, he tried to ignore it. Several hundred people turned up to protest at the early-evening council meeting. All went well, until they heard the public gallery would be restricted to 40. Then, someone said 28. Then, people decided they’d head in regardless. Why didn’t Bullock hold this meeting in a large hall somewhere and have it out?

Here are a few videos I shot during the rush.

I’ve got a small weapon

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Further dispatches from the Finger Up Your Arse files: another small tale about life at the butt-end of our era’s ridiculous paranoias:

So.

I was in Glasgow this week with a couple of hours to spare before catching my train back to London.

Glasgow is a lovely town and, by some miracle, the weather was perfect, so I decide to drop my large bag at Left Luggage at Glasgow Central to free up my person for a nice walk-around.

Well. It all nearly ended at Left Luggage, when I made a little joke about guns.

There was a copper in the Left Luggage shop who was friendly, to his credit, and a Left Luggage man who was not. He was just a little too pleased to be at work and in a uniform. There are a lot of them around.

This guy took my bag and fired off the standard security questions – the ones we can confidently assert that no terrorist ever answers straight:

– Is this bag yours?

– Did you pack it?

– Have you left it unattended since you packed it?

– Are you carrying any firearms or ammunition?

I can’t take this shit seriously. This shows pretty quickly. The truth is that a jobsworth at a Left Luggage stall is no more likely to save the world from the Taliban than your cat. What he is able to do, though, is tell you off like you were five if you don’t bend to the uniform. Doubtless, the copper is there to remind you that you and your attitude are only ever five minutes away from a cooling-off spell in the joint.
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Low key praise

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It’ll come as no surprise that a game old bird like me is down with East Acton youth.

I found out that fighting political rapper Lowkey was speaking at a small Hammersmith meeting this week from the 17-year-old son of an East Acton friend. This kid finds Lowkey thrilling. I do too, even though I should be past it. He looks very good, which always helps, and he writes the sort of anti-American, anti-imperialist lyric that a young Iraqi with a big mouth could feasibly disappear for. Certainly, East Acton youths get their collars felt for less. The 17-year-old kid and his friends are stopped by coppers all of the time.

Anyway. Here is the man himself in Hammersmith this week, bigging up militant protest and praising students who engage in it (to no small applause). Yoof love him, as well they might. He’s one of the few people on their circuit at the moment who is making any sense.

He even makes sense to an old girl like me. I like a man who deals in simple equations. And the youth equation is simple: there are no jobs for young people and they’re being priced out of education. Little wonder that they’re keen to rumble – apart from anything else, they’re probably bored out of their minds. I thought the same thing when I watched plunging fire extinguishers and Millbank window-smashing last week. I mean, really – what else do people expect? Personally, I couldn’t give a damn about the rights and wrongs of kicking in windows. Kicking in windows is not the point. The point is that the next generation has nothing to do and no money to do it with. Pity that point didn’t get as much coverage as the fire extinguisher.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – this would be a very good time to legalise pot.

In praise of militant protest, then:

and the second part. He is eloquent, all right.

Where consultations go to die

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A helpful someone has sent me comments submitted by users of Hammersmith and Fulham’s soon-to-be-disbanded home library service.

The disbanding of the home library service is part of a general Hammersmith and Fulham council assault on library services and staff – staff across libraries are being downgraded and posts cut as the council attempts to squeeze a few coins in savings out of this most popular and blameless of services.

The home library service is run from Barons court by a small, experienced team that is much valued by the elderly and disabled residents that it services. The council has told local libraries that from now on, they must run their own home library services, which of course they won’t be able to. At best, a home library visiting service will become a tacked-on extra. The staff cuts and downgradings will make it almost impossible for local libraries to spare staff to visit homes with the books, videos and CDs that home library users appreciate.

And they do appreciate those things, to say the least. The comments below make that clear.

The comments were made earlier this year when the council was ‘consulting’ (easily our era’s most meaningless word and act) local residents about its plans to dispense with the dedicated home library service. The really galling part is that the comments never saw the light of day. Word is that the forms they were on were shoved into a box that was, in its turn, shoved into a corner from which it only recently emerged. Even if the comments did end up in a report somewhere (and I haven’t seen it), they’ve been ignored. The dedicated home library service is coming to an end.

Anyway – here are some of the comments from home library service users. If nothing else (and there is nothing else), they show that locals are as passionate about their library services as Hammersmith and Fulham council is about eradicating services that don’t make a financial return:

“The Home Delivery Service, and its first rate reliable always cheerful staff. They know what to choose for each individual customer and find what is ordered.”

“As our Home service scheme is based there (Barons Court Library) I wouldn’t approve of any alternative arrangements which I feel might make working conditions for our lovely delivery people more strenuous.”

“My husband and I get through over 15 books (large) print), loads of videos, DVDs and CDs in the three-week period between visits. Without this service we would be left twiddling our fingers!”

“No trust could compare with the service at present. They have become “friends for life” rather than different individuals coming to us, if the service is farmed out to trusts or volunteers.”

“The Home Library Service is a life saver for us as we are both old and even if we were taken to a library we wouldn’t be able to carry the heavy books we enjoy so much.”

“Desperate to have the visiting library continue this service. Will sadly miss my supply of books to cover lonely days. In my case, being disabled, the books and whoever delivers them each time is important. Always such charming people, bringing a chirpy atmosphere.”

“The staff that comes to me always takes the trouble to bring books written by authors I like and also the H&F News which keeps me in touch with the outside world. Money is not the only answer to change, so do please think carefully on what you intend to do.”

“Barons Court Library and its services are wonderful, and it houses a wonderful Outreach service. The staff have worked under pressure for many years. The range of books and knowledgeable staff it’s time you rewarded their hard work and not downsized. It would be like losing my right arm.”

“The Home Library Service – my husband and I are very old and unable to get about much. The HLS has brought us books, talking books and DVDs every three weeks and the service is very much appreciated. I realise it may cost but since the number of people over 85 is increasing, the demand for such a service will also increase.”

“As I’m housebound my only way I could receive my library books is the Home Library. Without this service I would no longer enjoy the pleasure of reading.”

“I am not able to visit a library. My own service – The Home Library – is, as it always has been in mind exceptionally good and I judge the three people who run it exceptional also. To run the service on one full-time and two part-time employees is well nigh unbelievable. Not only do they bring the books but knowing one’s tastes they choose books also. I have always enjoyed their choices; they are well thought out and always interesting. These three people are so much more than ordinary library clerks and I would judge pretty well irreplaceable. The service they give me is of the highest order.”

“I totally depend on the regular service provided by the staff of the Home Library Service.”

More soon.

Living it up on JSA

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From 2007:

I meet Paul Thomas, 40, when I nearly tread on his hand. He’s sitting on the pavement by the door of the big petrol station on Shoreditch High Street. He asks everybody who enters the store if they can spare any change. He looks tired, unkempt and – well, a bit on the sad side, as we all probably would.

Doubtless, the likes of Iain Duncan Smith and the gone-and-largely-forgotten James Purnell would admire Paul’s can-do approach to life on a benefit: although horribly (and clinically) depressed and reeling from the loss of his job as a maintenance worker, he gets out to beg most afternoons.

I imagine that Duncan Smith would think that Thomas a great candidate for a few weeks’ compulsory gutter-cleaning here and there. He’s already sitting around on the side of the road, so the state wouldn’t even have to fund his commute. Thus millennium society restores the halt and the lame.

What Thomas needs, of course, is a proper job and help finding one. He liked working. He says he worked for ten years as a caretaker at the Trinity church round the corner before he was made redundant about 18 months ago.

“It can happen really easily that you’re out here. If you told me two years ago that I would be out here, I would never have thought that.” It is hardly surprising that depression has got the better of him. It nearly gets the better of me while we chat. If he had a reasonable job and enough to live on, the rest would probably take care of itself.

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How cuts reduce us all

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Updated 7 November 2010:

This morning, I went to the Shepherd’s Bush library on the Westfield shopping site to help out at a small protest that a group of Hammersmith and Fulham librarians had organised.

The librarians’ salaries (library assistants earn about £21,000) are due to be cut as part of Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council’s gleeful pursuit of ‘savings’ and local annihilation of any notion of community, or public service. The home library service is to be dismantled and word is that some local libraries will shut.

Tis my view that closing local libraries ranks near book-burning as a social contribution, but what would I know, I suppose. Hammersmith and Fulham libraries will close and the free reading sessions and activities for kids they provide will disappear, along with the books, CDs, DVDs and free computers that so many enjoy and need. The reading and IT classes for adults that many libraries run will take their place among history’s sweeter dead, like sonnets. Thus it is that the Tories plan to build a happy, deficit-free tomorrow. My main hope in life these days is that I won’t be around to see it.

Anyway – the protest. Three or four librarians – all middle aged women – stood outside the library for about an hour in their own free time and handed leaflets about their worries to members of the public. I was there – no spring chicken myself – along with two long-time reps from the Hammersmith Unison office, and a well-known local blogger and a reporter. My leg hurt and we were all moving slowly because it was cold and we were all getting old. Armed rebellion was hardly on our agenda.

But hey-ho and you never know – suddenly, we found ourselves surrounded by four or five very heavy-looking guys in black jackets – Westfield security. Thus the high camp began. These guys were ridiculously combative – Christ knows what they had on the PS3 back in the office. At least one member of our group was hanging out to meet the resource-allocation genius that decided to send in five heavies to take out three librarians.

The first guy in the video below was incredibly aggressive – ‘you can’t be here. You haven’t got permission. You have to get out.’

He got very upset when he saw I was filming. He came after me down the street, putting his hand out every now and then towards me – I thought he was going to try and grab the camera and maybe even grab me. I hurried down the road – another slow-moving, near-fogey on the run – then back up Uxbridge Road and down a side street so that I could film the scene from across the road. So far, so very tragic. People on the sidewalk were laughing, watching my little legs trotting off to safety.

You can see three of these guys on the film, standing over the women who were protesting:

You can also see one of the guys rush at the camera on Chris’ blog.

There were so many security guys hassling the librarians that people walking by observed that security inside Westfield itself had to be compromised and that now was the time to start thieving.

So. This is how public sector cuts for the hell of it look when you get down to it, people – four or five probably-badly-paid security guys trying to score points off three greying librarians on a pavement. And all for a handful of change in public-sector savings. I don’t think that this is us at our best, you know. I’d cry, if I was the type.

Here’s one of the library assistants – a ten year veteran of the job – explaining the reasons why she wanted to hand out leaflets (it was her day off, so she wasn’t on library time). She also talks about the work library assistants do.

I’ve had a lot of stupid days in my life, but today really took the biscuit.