Last night at the meeting with Margaret Carney we collected £57, after deduction of room hire, to be shared between SWACA and parenting 2000! Celia the treasurer will be dropping the money in to you soon.
For future meetings we have kindly been offered the use of Christ Church which will enable use to run the meetings at no cost, many thanks to Christ Church for this kind offer!
Many thanks also to Ms Carney who answered some difficult questions very well. We have taken detailed minutes which will be published as soon as they can be transcribed.
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ReplyDeleteGood article on resisting Council cuts on Lenin's Tomb blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/02/can-councils-resist-cuts.html
Thanks ant. That is a useful article!
ReplyDeleteTHE VIEW FROM THE LEFT
ReplyDelete"Many thanks also to Ms Carney who answered some difficult questions very well"
Dear oh dear. Just whose side are we on here? If only those naughty rabble-rousers hadn't given the nice lady in the expensive suit such a difficult time, eh? In any event, i don't think the analysis is correct: With the notable exception of those posed by myself and two or three others, the questions were generally very mild indeed - deferential in tone and tending to get too bogged down in specifics, easily allowing Carney off the hook for most of the evening. On the rare occasion where she was actually challenged, she floundered - as well she might, considering she is the official charged with implementing these ruinous policies. A more concerted effort at holding this lackey to account by the audience - myself included - could really have had her on the back foot. The likes of Carney just should not be allowed to get away with sacrificing other people's lives on the altar of their own careers in this way. It was disappointing, for example, to hear Jonathan Allen - who speaks very well and is a good socialist and trade unionist - give Carney the get-out clause of "she has to be apolitical and can't get involved". Well i'm sorry, but from where i'm standing, being the Chief Executive of a local authority on a six-figure salary while implementing budget cuts that will kill pensioners, rip families apart, destroy livelihoods, tear people out of their homes, and rob the cream of our youth of their futures, IS political in the very real sense of being extreme right-wing. "I was only following orders" and "I was only obeying the law" wasn't a legitimate defence at Nuremberg and it isn't now. The moral authority of the law itself is in question here. As George Orwell correctly pointed out: the claim to be apolitical is itself a highly (reactionary) political claim, and could not be otherwise.
As an additional point, there was a (predictable) parochial bent to some of the questioning centred around the worry over the re-allocation of funding from Southport to Bootle. We should avoid such petty localism as this. The issue is not one of geography but of Class. It is ordinary working and middle class people who are being robbed - whether they live in Bootle or Crosby or Southport or wherever - and it is the rich who are carrying out this robbery. Divide-and-rule is the oldest ruling class trick in the book, and Cameron and Osbourne would be laughing their heads off at the thought of, or example, Bootle blaming "Southport snobs" and Southport blaming "Bootle scallies" for their ills. (Plus, as an aside, such petty internecine parochial swiping ignores the real history behind why Southport and Bootle were fused together in 1974 in the ridiculous administrative entity that is Sefton in the first place. It was done, of course, as a way of diluting out and therefore neutralising the "dangerous" socialist potential of Bootle with the true blue Tory votes of Southport, at a time when district Labour Parties up and down the country were taking a turn to the Left. The same thing happened right across the map at the time of the 1974 changes to local government, and there is of course a word for this sort of thing: gerrymandering.)
On a more positive note, the true hero(ine) of the night was surely the courageous young girl who spoke forcefully and eloquently against the disgraceful closure of youth services planned by Carney and her ilk. Coming at the end of the evening, the comments were a great way to send the Chief Exec packing. Some of the older members of the audience, who seem stuck forever in "thank you for coming ma'am" Victorian deference mode, would do well to take a few lessons here.