The Devil You Say?!?

For Ian Birrell, the penny drops:

It is hard to ignore the idea that some charities saw the disaster as a chance to raise money; why else did they all need to be there despite the duplication and slap their logos everywhere? The Lancet accused them of jostling for publicity while Médécins sans Frontièrs – which almost uniquely stopped fundraising after a few days, having made enough for its needs – told me charities loved to be in front of cameras to ensure cash flowed in to their accounts.

This would not be so bad if the money was well spent. Big chunks went on vital and immediate emergency relief to save lives. But substantial sums were blown on botched projects and needless staff costs. I visited one place were families were lured to live in wooden sheds on the promise of jobs and decent public services, only to find themselves marooned on rocky land 10 miles from town, unemployed and charged twice the going rate for water. The voices of local people were ignored by arrogant outsiders, undermining accountability and sustainable development.

As the Centre for Global Development reported this month, only a shameful 0.6% of the money spent by bilateral and multilateral donors was given to Haitian charities and businesses. Meanwhile an estimated 40% went on supporting all the foreigners dispensing aid, with their inflated housing allowances, vehicles and drivers.

Well, that sums up Haiti, Ian.

Now, about all those other huge charities...

Oh, wait, wait! Do you have a solution to this?

When it comes to development aid, the concept of giving cash to people to spend as they see fit is attracting interest. Perhaps it is time to apply similar tactics to disaster relief once the most pressing emergency needs are out of the way. In Haiti, people could have been given more than double the average annual income. It is hard to believe they would not have spent the money better than the foreigners who have achieved depressingly little.

What an awesome concept! Could we extend it to schemes here at home, maybe?

I Don't Suppose 'Standing On Your Own Two Feet' Is An Option?

A young woman has taken on the fight against homelessness after being thrown into the situation herself.

Jessica Chipperfield said she left her father's home in Addiscombe after his partner learned she was gay.

Jessica, who is sofa-surfing between friends, said: "I want to raise awareness of homelessness so people can understand the reasons for it – it is not the person's fault.

"Young people need to be given better advice and help in their way, rather than getting pushed and shoved about."

Jessica is 20. Yes. 20.

And the 'help' she thinks she ought to be given? Well, she was indeed given it.

Jessica said she was also spurred into action after being disappointed with help she received from Croydon Council over her housing problems.

She said: "They gave me an information pack and told me I can get rent for £290 to £340. There is a lack of help and advice."

No, there's not. That's it. That's all you are really entitled to. You are 20 years old, you should have a job and be independent.

She said: "At the moment I have not got a job and people are saying to me because I am homeless I cannot get a job."

What stopped you before you were homeless, then? And what is it you really want?

A Croydon Council spokesman said it was sorry Jessica was disappointed with the service she received from the council but families with children had to come first.

He said: "Like many local authorities, the council currently has a shortage of temporary accommodation and has to prioritise families with children and those who are deemed vulnerable."

Ah. Of course. You want a 'free' house.

If It's Not Your Job, Whose Is It?

Croydon Council chief executive Jon Rouse has come under fire for suggesting it was not his job to be scrutinised by the press as he asked for journalists to leave a community meeting.

Journalists were last night told to leave the meeting in West Croydon after Mr Rouse, said he felt "uncomfortable" with their presence.

I guess nearly £250k a year doesn't buy much these days:

Mr Rouse, whose renumeration to run the council last year was £248,362 including pension contributions, told the meeting after his arrival: "I just feel uncomfortable about this situation. It's not appropriate for an officer to be placed in this position. It is going to be a very different meeting if the press are here.

"It is not my job to place myself in a position in which I have to defend council policy and have my words scrutinised and reported on by the press. That is the place of our democratically elected politicians."

Hey, nothing to hide, nothing to fear, eh Mr Rouse?

What The State Granteth, Why Cannot The State Not Taketh Away?

A British citizen who posed as a struggling asylum seeker so he could claim more than £10,000 in crisis loans has been jailed.

What sort of British citizen?

The court heard Hassan arrived in the UK in 1990, sought asylum in 1991, committed his first criminal offence in 1994 and was granted British citizenship in 2000.

Ah. Right. No wonder we are the laughing stock of the world…

The court heard he offended just four months after being released from a 12-month prison sentence for fraudulently obtaining £45,000 in benefits.

In his home country of Somalia, what’s the punishment for being a persistent offender, I wonder?

Miss Chamberlain said her client hoped to reapply for his driving licence and realised if he didn't change his ways he would be in a cycle of returning to prison "over and over again".

Well, only if they keep catching him, I suppose…

But look at that timeline again – arrived here, claimed asylum, began a life of crime and yet was STILL granted citizenship.

Why can it not now be revoked?

“But…Parenting Isn’t Supposed To Be Hard Work, Surely..?”

The latest ‘Guardian’ attempt to whip up enthusiasm for a public-supported fight back against benefit cuts fails as miserably as the others:

Karen and Darren Millar live in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. They both work full-time, Karen as a family support worker and Darren as a computer programmer. They rent privately and have four children, aged between three and 16. Their gross family income is £44,000, including tax credits.

Ah. Right. And their beef?

Karen said:"People might think that four children is asking for trouble but we coped perfectly well until the coalition came in and began cutting away at the tax credit system at the same time as childcare costs increased."

Translation: ‘I could easily afford four kids when everyone else was paying, but now look what’s happened!’

Newsflash, Karen; that’s exactly why we’re cutting benefits!

"We don't have any disposable income any more. Every single penny we earn goes on the most basic necessities. If we're really lucky, we might have £20 left at the end of the month but that doesn't happen often. "

Oh, boo hoo! Hang on, where’s my tiny violin? I know it was around here somewhere…

"I try to make sure the children can have fresh fruit every day but there are occasions when I can't even afford that: they go without anything fresh at all maybe one week in four."

Really? I take it you don’t bother shopping around, or buying fruit that’s not absolutely perfect, then?

Still, as long as you aren't telling me you've got mobile phones and Sky t…

Oh:

"We have the lowest possible tariffs on our phones, a no-frills Sky package so the children have a little bit to watch because we can't afford to take them out."

Blood pressure….RISING!

"It's very difficult to eat healthily if you don't have lots of money. There are loads of deals on ready meals and food high in fat but you very rarely see a deal with fresh or healthy food. We realised that our diet was making us all lethargic. The children were quieter and didn't have as much life in them. "

Well, hallelujah! They've seen the light!

"So last year, Darren and I completely changed the way we eat. We now cook everything from scratch. The change in our health is amazing: our skin and hair has improved, the children wake up better in the mornings and don't seem as grumpy or agitated. It's changed their attitude to school: they're making more of an effort with their work. Their attitude to their health has improved too: the 14-year-old has started doing exercise. The 16-year-old has started asking for fruit and vegetables. "

Amazing! But….wait. This is supposed to be a typical ‘Guardian’ whingefest, isn't it?

"But healthy eating carries a cost: our food bills have gone up by about £50 to £100 a month, although that's also due to food prices spiralling. "

Ah. Right. They want more money so they can parent their brood in the style to which they've become newly accustomed.

"It definitely makes us tempted to return to our old diet: when you can spend £4 on a deal that gives you a week of meals for one person, you wonder if it's worth all the effort. But then you see the health impact and you see that it is. "

Good. Get on with it then. No, you can’t have more money.

And no, it doesn't matter that you seem like a nice well educated family, with non-feral children with sensible names, rather than the usual demanding underclass feckless wasters with children whose names look like a particularly difficult to use handful of Scrabble tiles (some of these are coming up later today, though).

The simple fact is...I don't want to have to pay for you to breed. You want kids? Fine. Pay for them yourself.

Why You Are Wrong To Put Your Faith In Councils...

Alison Benjamin (editor of the Guardian's Society section and co-author of A World Without Bees and Keeping Bees and Making Honey) thinks parks are the bee’s knees:

More adults want councils to protect spending on green spaces, including parks and playgrounds, than spending on libraries, youth clubs and helping people find work. Nine out of 10 adults in the Ipsos Mori poll commissioned by environmental charity Groundwork said green spaces are an important factor in making somewhere a good place to live or work.

Yes, well, that’s the problem with surveys – they tend to provide the answer the people running them seek.

It's all in the way you phrase the questions, as S Weasel shows us.

I'm pretty sure if the libraries people ran a survey, or the association of youth club leaders, it’d miraculously find a quite different answer!

… a range of environmental bodies will argue in Manchester on Wednesday that failure to maintain investment in green space is a false economy.

Well, yes. Of course they will.

Green spaces near our homes give us valuable places to get to know our neighbours, and build the social glue that reduces crime, says a report on the benefits of green space.

"High-quality, well-maintained parks and green spaces make a significant contribution to the establishment and retention of stable and law-abiding communities," it says.

It also states that if everyone had easy access to green spaces, obesity costs to the NHS could be reduced by up to £2bn, and that the calming effect of green spaces has been shown to reduce hospital admissions for mental illness in deprived urban areas in the US.

Far-fetched claims?

Well, almost certainly, but that doesn't usually stop people, does it?

Not if we remember the origins of public parks. The first official acknowledgment of the need for my local park in east London came in the 1839 annual report of the registrar general of births, deaths and marriages.

Recording a mortality rate far higher than the rest of London, brought about by overcrowding, insanitary conditions and polluted air, he wrote: "A park in the East End of London would probably diminish the annual deaths by several thousands … and add several years to the lives of the entire population."

And in 1839 it was indeed a good idea, but then, in 1839 we were a vastly different society to the one we have now, weren't we?

I rather doubt that in 1839 they had gangs of disaffected youth, muggers, drugs dealing, litter, dangerous dogs, disrespect for property… all things which plague modern day parks.

Today in the UK we don't need parks to prevent diseases spreading, but they still provide a range of vital benefits. So how can we pay for them? The majority of those polled want councils to pay for their upkeep.

But 40% said money from sponsorship by local companies should foot the bill. In Manchester, MPs worked closely with major industrialists to bring parks to cities.

Is that the way forward 150 years on?

Well, as a commenter points out, it better not be left solely to the public sector!

Agir

I have been waiting 10 years for this article: I worked as a ranger in Ealing (2nd greenest borough in London) and was shocked at the sheer incompetence of the management, not only in wasting money but also in a complete lack of environmental or social knowledge. A few examples : A fountain in Walpole park used mains water pressure (i.e. was simply a large bore tap) running all day, all year because there was no budget for installing a motor or simply even putting a timer on it. Grass cutting contracts were so badly managed and written that in a particularly sunny wet year the grass that had been cut was longer than that that had been left (grass grows until it seeds and then grows much much less - apparently not one contracts manager was aware of this fact of nature) that was a waste in excess of £1 million each year, plus all the unnecessary noise and air pollution from the grass cutters. We couldn't take a deposit from contractors wanting to put a temporary access road across a park because the accounts were zeroed each year and thus we couldn't hold the funds. The contractors were paid to do a variety of things but the actual completion rate was below 40% i.e paid to fertilise raised beds but never did (nor even had the equipment to do so - despite being paid for the job. All tree work was done on a job basis regardless of the amount of work involved, felling 6 trees cost the same as removing one limb from each tree. Several members of staff did zero work but couldn't be sacked as the process would take so much work effectively you would need to hire someone to watch the person every day for a year to see that they had done nothing. The vehicle maintenance (not fuel) contract cost £7,000 per vehicle each year (the vehicles weren't even worth that). Play parks were overhauled without any research into user needs (and there is no point building a BMX track if no one on the estate has access to a BMX. By now you have got the picture. Lessons learned: I could have saved at least half the budget just by not cutting the majority of the grass and then by removing rose bushes, enforcing the contracts that were already signed, sacking the bad staff and a few things could have delivered better service for 20% of the cost. Also the guy whose kid was injured in the foot by a roundabout in Acton would probably like to know that yes we knew about the potential danger (it had happened before and was highlighted every year by external auditors, and by me every month) and was not a non-preventable accident, and yes the management lied utterly and destroyed evidence to hide this..

Is anyone surprised by this? I'm not.

Those Terrible, Awful Cuts (cont)...

A search has been launched to appoint a £70,000 a year tourism boss for Plymouth.

Ahahahahahahahaha....

No. Seriously?

Over 30,000 jobs in the city rely on tourism and visitors and it is an important part of Plymouth's economy, with 3.5 million day visitors and 2.4 million staying visitors.

All of whom would vanish like smoke in the breeze without a 'chief executive responsible for boosting the visitor economy', clearly.

Hey! Maybe Signposts Will Help!

About a fortnight ago, these started showing up in Southend High Street:

There’s one at almost every ‘junction’ point down the high street, and near the new Victoria Circus development.

Not only do they pick out the stations, university, courts, bus stops and other points of interest, they have sprouted direction-pointers at the top with the estimated walking time to each of these.

It’s all part of the SSHAPE High Street Enhancement scheme apparently, as a plaque set up where the (non-working) Millennium Clock used to be tells us.

 However, if Southend Council wanted to ‘enhance’ the high street, putting up street furniture like this (in an age of smartphones and voice-activated GPS mapping) seems a little pointless.

Surely a far better idea would be to stop issuing temporary occupation licenses for high street shops like Boots (moved into the vast over-half-empty white elephant of the Victoria Circus shopping mall) to be turned into purveyors of cheap tat?

Or preventing the opening of yet another 99p shop?

Or ensuring that the beggars, drunks and mentally ill from the nearby estates are kept away?

If you want the high street to welcome shoppers, they have to have a reason to go there and the fact that you can’t walk 50 yards without a bit of street furniture to tell you exactly where things are and how long it’ll take to get there just doesn’t cut the mustard…