thelordofruin

Blue Labour - for working people

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@nat_fahy We now know what you get for a failure like this - an MBE for services to planning

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

Expensive and poor quality - CQC finds delays and safety concerns in Nottingham adult social care | West Bridgford Wire https://t.co/9FfKdHc5C7

[LeftLion Magazine Nottingham @LeftLion]

This summer will mark the fourth year of Nottingham Puppet Festival, and if you're yet to experience it, then you’re guaranteed a very memorable time.

https://t.co/8Ntd7MnM6y

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Here’s the problem. The liberal political class wants us to treat atrocities like Belfast as single, random, isolated incidents. “Yes, it’s horrific, but don’t overreact,” they say. “Let the police do their job. Justice will be delivered. Let’s remain united,” and so on.

But the public can see that such incidents *aren’t* random or isolated. They are, in fact, all the consequence of massive state failure in the area of asylum and immigration. All roads lead back there.

That’s why people are angry.. They are sick of the platitudes that get trotted out after each fresh incident. They don’t want to hear them anymore. They know that the decisions of establishment politicians have brought us to this current pass, and they don’t trust those same politicians to fix things, especially when some of them refuse to even recognise that the public’s anger is justified.

There has been a huge vibe shift in recent years. Imagine - God forbid - there were another 7/7. Does anyone think the public response would be anything like as restrained as it was then? We are in really dangerous territory.

The public don’t want flowers and candles and “Don’t let them divide us.” They want someone who says, “I recognise that the state has failed abjectly. We have allowed far too many people to settle in the country without knowing who they truly are. It has disrupted your communities. Your anger is justified. And I will do everything in my power to put things right.”

Any politician unwilling to articulate that message, fully and sincerely, is effectively sanctioning more years of growing social disharmony and discord. Things cannot heal until those in power recognise the extent of the problem and what it will take to fix it. And, on both counts, most of them don’t.

That’s why the next few years are going to be very, very turbulent.

[Blue Labour @blue_labour]

What were they thinking? Former police officer @Jonathan_Hinder writes for @FutureLeft1 on the Henry Nowak killing and the police response.

Read it here: https://t.co/QpFL2SEsXx

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@nat_fahy No CCTV, a history of ASB, no community safety plan for anywhere in the city and the officers responsible nowhere in sight either.

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@NottsOPCC @AngelaKandola @NCT_Buses @nottspolice @MyNottingham Police overtime or CPos would be a better solution to security guards. As is the OPCC is littering the city with security guards in different uniforms with different responsibilities - just keep it to cops or CPos then we know what we are getting and what powers they have

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@nat_fahy A good idea and at last some action about public safety.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

This is a belter. Measured, eloquent and thoughtful. Worth half an hour of anyone's time.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

This exchange is so revealing. Kenyon points out the obvious - that the more people that enter a country, the more houses that country will need. But upon hearing the argument that immigration puts pressure on the housing supply, the Green candidate immediately defaults to her "I'm shocked and horrified you could ever say such a thing!" mode. The funny thing is, she ends up agreeing with him, but even then she tries to pretend he has said something appalling. This is what happens when politics is rooted in feelings rather than facts.

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@MyNottingham @CllrNeghat - not a word about crime and safety in a city that’s struggling ?

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Was it wrong to “politicise” the Stephen Lawrence murder? Or that of George Floyd? What does the word “politicise” even mean in that context? Don’t tell me that it is right to “rage against the machine” when state authorities fail black murder victims for reasons connected with race, but that we are obliged not to “stir up tensions” when the victim happens to be white. It is this two-tier approach that is fuelling tensions and division. Can the establishment not see it?

[Nottingham World @NottmWorld]

Nottingham tops ranking of UK cities struggling most with poor roads and potholes https://t.co/2CdJHm203I

[Tom Forth @thomasforth]

And lastly. Thatcher did mess up FE. Took the polytechnics and the colleges off local government. No-one claims that's been a success. Andy is right to want it back with local government. And right to think the "go to Uni" route won't have high returns. https://t.co/ni3zVPnRiD

[Tom Forth @thomasforth]

Did Wigan and the places like it in the North suffer worst from Thatcherism? (I won't call it neoliberalism). Yes. The industry was abandoned (especially in R&D). The local government was destroyed (rate capping, abolishing the metropolitan counties, asset seized by right to buy)

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@Battlemuch4WW Time to move out of Loxley and do something brave like use the the Debenhams building as a new HQ for a new council

[Dan Carden @DanCardenMP]

Tony Blair's essay is a serious contribution. The party is drifting. Just Labour ends in the comfort zone, a place the country is sick of, and that ends in defeat.

There is some common ground on policy reform: on welfare, on the North Sea, on illegal immigration, on growth before redistribution, on the planning system.

But he stops short of the project he says he is looking for.

The age he describes, China rising, supply chains weaponised, a more dangerous world, demands an active state. It demands an industrial strategy with the muscle to build, make and defend. Not incentives and partnership. Direction.

And it demands a politics rooted in the country as it actually is. Family. Work. Place. Nation.

That project has a name. It is Blue Labour. It is radical in the way he claims to want, and it answers the legitimacy problem his Radical Centre cannot. Efficacy is not legitimacy.

His essay names three actors. The state, the private sector, the voluntary sector. The citizen is missing. Treated as a recipient of services, a unit of human capital, a problem on a welfare roll. Never as someone with a contribution to make. That is why his politics will always feel like something done to people, not something done with them.

Homes for Ukraine was one of the best designed policies of recent years. The state set the frame, the councils did the checks, the contracts were in place. But the policy only worked because the British people did the work. Ordinary households opened their doors to strangers on a scale this country has not seen in generations. No essay about Britain's future can be written without what the British people give to it.

A smaller welfare state is the right goal. But you get there by asking more of citizens and more of the state in return. Work, training, a stake in your community on one side. Decent jobs, real opportunity, services that function on the other. Not sanctions on people the system has already failed. Dependency is not dignity. Contribution is.

This is where apprenticeships matter. They were once a relationship. A trade, a master, a young person, a place. The apprenticeship levy turned them into a tax credit for big companies and a way to rebadge graduate training. And we never gave them a home. University students have campuses like palaces. The young person learning a trade would be lucky to get a portakabin. It tells you what this country values. A young person learning a trade from someone who knows it is worth more than anything the corporatised version delivers.

Across economic and social policy, the challenge is to rebuild the relationship and place, so that dignity can be restored.

There is a challenge here for the progressive class as well. People have come second to their causes. The working class were told their concerns could wait or that they were wrong, and when they refused to wait any longer they were called the problem. A party that puts its causes before its people will keep losing them. Causes do not rebuild politics. People do.

Naming the drift is not the same as ending it. A list of policies is not a story about the country and its people, and what we owe each other. That is what the country is waiting so desperately for.

[Pat McFadden @patmcfaddenmp]

A lot of young unemployed people have never had the chance of work.

We need to help them break out of the no experience no job bind.

Work experience can help do that and that's why we want more young people to have that chance. https://t.co/JtPHUrv9ui

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@CllrMattShannon @kirstyljones @_Ankunda Might ask how she was selected as a labour candidate in the first place. There were concerns known at the time that were brushed over. Stronger due diligence and a relentless focus on quality candidates will be needed going forward.

[thelordofruin @hyperion2206]

@John_Dabell @BelleamiNottm Fairly normal for the whole city - diagnostic centre planned for a street filled with litter, encampments and rats. Council has plenty of money to put schemes in But nothing to maintain them