Ken Loach on One Barnet: a licence for exploitation

When the 'Tale of Two Barnets' film was made last year, it was prefaced with an introduction by film director Ken Loach, whose lifetime's work, focused with an unflinching eye on the realities of life in Britain, both now and in the past, has had such a profound influence on the way we see ourselves, and our place within the social boundaries we inhabit. 

The boundaries of Broken Barnet provided the material for last year's film, which gave voice to some of the citizens of this borough, including Mrs Angry, and created a space for them to express their views on the future of their community, as we stand now, on the brink of disaster, as an impotent, morally bankrupt Conservative administration, and a senior management team working covertly to its own agenda, open up the sale of our council services to a favoured list of predatory, profiteering private sector clients.

So much has happened since the Tale of Two Barnets was made, and the producers have decided to make a sequel, 'Barnet: The Billion Pound Gamble', centred on the imminent outsourcing of £1 billion worth of our services - a scale of privatisation that is unprecedented in the context of any local authority administration, and represents, as the title of the film suggests, an astonishingly high risk strategy, and one which is almost certainly going to fail, with devastating consequences for our community, not just in financial terms, but in the effects on standards of care provision and  countless other services upon which we all depend.

Ken Loach has filmed an introduction for the second film, in which he observes that Barnet has become a by word for unscrupulous outsourcing, and talks about the economic impact of outsourcing both locally and at the further point of outsourced labour. 
 
 

In Barnet we face the reality, post outsourcing, of jobs leaving this borough, and being relocated not just elsewhere, but offshored to the Indian subcontinent, to centres such as Bangalore, where all the remaining bidders in the One Barnet procurement process have interests.

As Loach points out, outsourcing, and its inevitable use of the cheapest workers, is a licence for exploitation, enabling unscrupulous employers to screw the workforce as hard as they can, whether here or in the poorest countries of the far east.

The loss of jobs here in Barnet will have a profound effect on our local economy, already struggling in the recession, (and further damaged by the authorities hugely restrictive, income generating obsessed new parking policies).

Ken Loach makes an observation which ought to be obvious to everyone, but clearly evades the notice of our treacherous Tory councillors, who seem unable to grasp the looming electoral apocalypse that will ensue should this mass privatisation go through - we need our communities to thrive.

He leaves us with a question: what sort of society do we want? 

Barnet is broken, and now all the pieces are being smashed up with a big hammer and given away to friends in the private sector, while we are expected to sit back, and watch it all taken away.

Go and see the new film, which will have its premiere at the historic Phoenix Cinema on Monday, 22nd October, 6pm. Then decide if the sell off of our borough to the highest bidder will provide you with the society you want to live in. If not, you might want to make your voice heard, now, loudly, before it is too late.

Updated: see press release from the producers of the new film:

 9th October 2012 
 

Award winning Film Director Ken Loach has lambasted Barnet Council's One Barnet outsourcing programme in a scathing attack in a new documentary film "Barnet - The Billion Pound Gamble", directed by Charles Honderick. Mr Loach was interviewed exclusively for the film and says:

"A billion pounds, now that’s money you will pay, Barnet residents will pay, and the jobs that will be provided will probably not be in Barnet. A lot of the jobs will go to other boroughs or even outside of Britain altogether."

Mr Loach notes that taxpayers are getting poor value for money as jobs leave the borough, causing poverty, hardship and economic decline.

 "Now that’s a bad deal for Barnet because you want your rates and money put in to go to support your local economy,  to go to support Barnet people & this is not about being narrow & excluding others, this is just commonsense that we need local communities to thrive & the end of that logic, that says the money should go to the cheapest workers is of course that the money goes to those who eat grass first."

As well as Mr Loach, the film features people from all walks of life in Barnet talking about their experiences and looks at all aspects of life in Barnet in 2012, including the relocation of Barnet Football club to Harrow, the closure of Friern Barnet Library, the cost of parking in the High Street and the provision of care services for the disabled and elderly. 

Director Charles Honderick said "The film gives a voice to everyone who cares about what is happening in their community. The stories we have heard are stories which should be shared. Some of the things you will see you will find hard to believe can happen in a civilised society".

 Mr Honderick continued "As a filmmaker I am honoured to have my work recognised by Ken Loach. He has spent years making films with power and meaning. His wise words are ones we'd be foolish to ignore". 

The film has its world premiere at the Phoenix Cinema in Finchley at 6pm on Monday 22nd October 2012. Admission is £1. 

You can see the full interview with Mr Loach at the film website  - 

http://www.billionpoundgamble.co.uk/

We're on the road to Nowhere

During our long, long struggle to get something done about the mess we have been landed in by Barnet, many people have offered us their well meant advice - some good, some not so good, some bad, and some frankly highly illegal.

This advice has ranged from the obvious: complain to the police/council - answer well, yeah, done that, to - no, really kick up a fuss - answer, yes, we have really REALLY done that ... to the more extreme, usually involving violence and the risk of arrest ...

A lot of sympathy was shown by a cab driver, for example, who mentioned, with a knowing wink as he dropped me off, that he is a childhood friend and drinking partner of members of a notorious local crime family ... it seems that they, unlike Barnet Council, have a stringent policy of zero tolerance to people like our neighbours, or as he put it, '******** like that'. Interesting idea, that social justice is now the responsiblity of community minded gangsters rather than the local council, but being the wet middle class woolly liberals that we are, we thought we should stick to more conventional solutions.

In retrospect, of course, this may well have been a major mistake, as behaving ourselves and following the correct procedures has been spectacularly unsucessful. And no, Ms Hillan and Mr Freer, I'm not behaving myself anymore.


Here in Broken Barnet, we learned, social justice is dependent on a local authority whose political idealogy does not allow a financial committment to the resources and staffing needed to protect the community from antisocial behaviour. There is little evidence either, in our experience, that the authority wants to improve its partnership with the police in order to more effectively address the problem as part of any multi-agency approach. Of course after the recent high profile cases which illustrate the tragic consequences of ignoring ASB and its impact on victims, this sort of laissez-faire attitude has been shown to be clearly inadequate and highly criticised by coroners, politicians, 'Victims' champion Sara Payne, and now in a highly significant report by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary.


Most people - encouraged by our local authority -imagine that antisocial behaviour takes place on council estates, far away, in run down areas, urban ghettoes. The truth is somewhat different. It can happen anywhere, and increasingly does.

If repeated ASB takes place in a council owned property, there is a procedure which the council can follow which will lead to a fairly easy and swift eviction by the family or individual responsible for the trouble.

If, on the other hand, the ASB takes place in a privately owned property, caused by a tenant who has been placed there by a council housing scheme like Homechoice, the authority can simply stand back and evade all responsibility for the problem. Nothing to do with me, guv. Off the housing list, out of sight, out of mind. Barnet has no system to ensure that the tenancy is responsibly managed by the landlords, or indeed any system to vet landlords before their uninspected accommodation is taken on for recommendation to homeless residents. You might be forgiven for thinking that this is a license for bad behaviour for both tenants and landlords, and you would be absolutely right.

Homechoice properties can be anywhere: with so many recent problems in the housing market, there are plenty of very nice properties in residential areas that are now being let, rather than sold. And it may seem like a very good idea to offer your property to the local authority ... if you are thinking of this, if I were you I would think again, unless you want to run the risk of acquiring tenants like our neighbours.

Last year, there was a lot of publicity given to a story about a detached house in Totteridge which was occupied by tenants from the Homechoice scheme, and whose alleged behaviour had enraged neighbours and the owners too. Of course, because the family in question were said to be travellers, this was seized upon by the tabloid press who never miss an opportunity to feature a negative story about gypsies and perceived benefit scroungers. But it drew attention for the first time to the housing scheme which was now distributing 'vulnerable' tenants in receipt of benefits all around the borough. This will, incidentally, have a very interesting effect on voting patterns, won't it? If the natural Labour vote is shared out in Tory areas?

There is absolutely every reason for genuinely needy families to be given a decent home to live in, and undoubtedly most of these families placed in private accommodation are well behaved tenants, but what happens when they are not?


Nothing really happens, that's what. You just have to put up with it.

In theory, the landlord can evict the tenant if they are in breach of the tenancy agreement. But what if the landlord refuses to evict the tenant? As long as the rent is paid, an unscrupulous landlord will care very little about the behaviour of the people living in his property, as we have found.


You might expect that, as in our case, after being encouraged by the police and local authority to report and record several months and nearly two hundred incidents of ASB, the local authority might fulfill its promise to apply to court for ASBOs in regard to your neighbours from hell. You might expect that, but, as in our case, you might very well be wrong.



To be continued.