Category Archives: Articles Posted On Hilary’s Professional Website
Move On If You’re Monied (Or Now Alone)
Summary: The status is still unclear of recent proposals that social housing (‘council housing’ and the like in old parlance) be only for those in greatest financial need. But whether simply political musing, or seriously on the agenda, these propositions are, even just for starters, a very bad idea. And so, without very careful preparation, is the idea that if family changes mean your house becomes ‘underoccupied’, or you are job-seeking, you must move on.
Such proposals miss the point that people live in communities, not isolation; and communities require a degree of stability. These ideas can result only in one thing – more so-called ‘no hope’ estates, and fast.
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
Brokering For Adequacy In Austerity
Summary: There’s little most of us as individuals can add to general commentary about the current fierce financial cuts; but there is perhaps a real role for brokerage, undertaken by non-partisan cross-industry bodies, to find a way forward.
The first priority, beyond politics, must surely be to minimise harm as far as possible in the face of a grim determination to reduce public spending at any cost.
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
Homes, Job Prospects And Horizons: How Far Is ‘Away’?
Summary: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, proposes to help people move house to get work. This is not of itself a new idea; from Norman Tebbit’s ‘on your bike’ onwards it has been proposed in various ways by the main political parties that those without employment need encouragement to become domestically mobile. Inevitably the counter-argument has been that jobs are not necessarily to be found just around the corner, a mere bikeride – or, in Duncan Smith’s proposals, within fifteen miles – of where jobless people currently live. So can this idea work?
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
Inaction On Regional Trains Speaks Louder than Words
Summary: The electrification of railway lines in the NW of England (and elsewhere) has been planned for some while. Money was allocated for this programme by the last government, recognising the need to modernise regional intercity connections for economic and environmental reasons.
But in the new coalition government’s austerity-focused scheme of things it seems this plan is under threat. Upgrading these lines is essential. It’s the regional economy, people’s livelihoods and issues of energy efficiency which are at stake. Vague words of hope for the future will not do.
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
A Trial Of Two Localisms
Summary: Has nationally-prescribed double devolution somehow morphed into nationally-prescribed strategic localism? Is either of them meaningful without generous national resources and serious leadership? Can the previous double devolution consultation model really transmute into genuine local self-determination? And is this proposed shift in the end about strategy for the future, or about nostalgia for the past?
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
