Something good about the government

[andrewducker]

I’m not a massive fan of the current government.  I don’t trust Tony Blair further than I could throw him and David Blunkett seems to hold fairly opposite positions to me on some fairly fundamental points regarding freedom.

However, I get monumentally incensed by people claiming that there’s no difference between them and the Conservatives (a fact I’ve mentioned before).  Huge amounts of cash have been spent on public services (which have shown improvements), working time directives and rights for part time workers have been implemented, and we still have an economy in better shape that most other parts of the planet.

To give an example of one of the good things going on, today’s Independent has a piece on homeless people.  Did you know that the number of people sleeping rough is 1/3 of what it was before Labour came to power?  £200m has been spent getting people off the streets – teams of people working for a new Rough Sleepers Unit get people off the streets, help with their drug habit and into work.  They deal with all the paperwork, doctors, hostels and training institutions.

Of course, these people are categorised as ‘pen pushers’ in the recent attacks on the civil service.  Which only goes to show that pushing the right pens in the right ways can make huge positive changes to people’s lives.

Oh, and one of the major changes that’s made the changes possible?  Heroin prescription.  It transpires that if addicts are given heroin for free then they don’t need to spend all their time stealing from people, selling the items on and tracking down dealers, thus leaving them with enough time to actually work for a living (which most of them are perfectly capable of doing).

Of course, with the number of homeless people on the street dropping, attention has moved to people living in temporary accommodation – whole families living in rented accommodation one step up from the street.  Which is why the government is making changes there too – the number of families in B&Bs having been brought down by 5% in the last month.

Why, I’d like to know, don’t we hear more about this kind of thing?

Comments

[gnomatron.livejournal.com]

Good news doesn't sell, basically.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Well, you notice that there's been no big jump for the Tories.

Aside of that, I'd say (1) good news doesn't sell, (2) "who wants to read about the bloody wogs and junkies? Shoot them all, I said to Margaret.." (3) the problem is that a lot of the basic problems in Britain today are either way expensive to deal with (think NHS), take a lot of time to iron out or would require politically dangerous changes that nobody thinks would pass through Commons. So you end up with a moderate Labour government that has an asshat PR machine that is doing what it can, but its reach is limited.

[thamantha.livejournal.com]

Saw this linked from purelyskindeep

As far as numbers of homeless people dropping i'm afraid i still have an inherent distrust of government. From them numbers droppping can be caused by a change in definitions.
If you only count people sleeping rough on the streets and not those who have no where to live but are crashing on a couch at a friends then you hallve the number of homeless people but not the problem of the number of people who have no where to live.
If the statistics change without definitions changing then i will be very happy. I'm just far too cycnical, but i do agree that good news is a wonderful thing.

[tisme.livejournal.com]

To quote the article a bit more:

In 1999 - the year Blair and Gordon Brown finally abandoned Tory spending plans - the Government began to plough £200m into lifting the poorest people in Britain off the streets. This whopping sum - more than some homeless charities were demanding - has made it possible to introduce a whole new approach to lifting people off the streets. The new Rough Sleepers Unit is in charge of Contact and Assessment Teams (CATs) for homeless people. It sounds jargon-heavy, but the reality is life-changing. Each individual is assigned a CATs worker who develops a detailed action plan for getting them into accommodation, dealing with their drug habit, and ultimately into work. They ring the hostels, they liaise with the GPs, they find them job training. Homeless people aren't on their own any more.

And the extra cash for the homeless (raised by, yes, increased taxation, particularly on the middle class) buys even more than this. Once they are housed, the ex-homeless are given a Tenancy Sustainment Officer who helps to make sure they don't lose their new home. These officers have been so successful that the rate of tenancy breakdowns has fallen to just 3 per cent. And there's more: spending on social housing stock has increased by 250 per cent under New Labour. But how many of us know about these successes? In some cities, such as Birmingham, the number of people on the streets has been cut by 96 per cent.

Don't take the word of the government for these figures. Chris Holmes, the Director of Shelter, has welcomed these developments, explaining, "The numbers of people sleeping on the streets has reduced under this government, and every month people are moving off the streets and into accommodation. New work to support previously homeless people and enable them to stay in their homes is also extremely positive. The Government deserves credit for what has been achieved in such a short time-scale."

[thamantha.livejournal.com]

After reading that i am truly genuinely impressed.
Thank you for sharing that with me.

[miramon.livejournal.com]

Because the government feels that its greatest achievement is hiring out the armed forces as mercenaries for the American conquest of Iraq, and is deeply, deeply ashamed of things you mention (which are the sort of thing that only a scummy, terrorist-loving liberal would think worthy of attention).

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Yup. Well you've heard me on this one too. Being a horribly old person, I actually lived through the whole of Thatcher and I never thought I'd see the day when we incorporated European human rights law into domestic law; when we took the need for child care funding and nurseries seriously; when we actually thought sensibly about how to get single mothers off benefit and into work. It may not be all working but as a family lawyer it's a damn improvement.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

No news is good news.

In todays mercenary society, the reverse is also true.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It's not just that. Another thing you don't hear about is the UK's excellent labour market record; basically, employment is incredibly high and stable, and unemployment is incredibly low and stable -- both compared to our historical record and compared to the EU and the G7. And nobody ever seems to write about it. We've essentially worked out how to get unemployed people back to work, we've pretty much worked out what works to get lone parents back to work, and (touch wood) we have a fairly good idea of what will work to get a significant number of people who are on long-term incapacity benefits back to work. Why might you want to get people to work, other than a short-term 'saving money for the government' view? Because having a job is correlated significantly with general happiness and health -- and the latter correlation doesn't work in the way you think it does, but rather that having a job improves a whole range of health conditions. Meanwhile, we pay benefits to a whole lot of people, not always perfectly but, you know, really quite well considering. None of this is newsworthy.

And, to pick a random example from another sector; my local hospital is Whipps Cross, much maligned. On Tuesday morning, my daughter was examined, x-rayed, examined again, plastered up, and sorted out within 2 1/2 hours, with an appointment for the following day.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I get my eyes tested for free (because I have the kind of eyes that mean I need annual eye tests): one of the first small practical changes Labour put into place when they took power in 1997, as far as I can tell. (I went for an eyetest in July 1997, expecting to have to pay, but the optician - to whom I'd been going since I was 7 - had already picked up on the new rules and knew they applied to me.)

I suppose the problem is: The good stuff that Labour's been doing, and there's a lot of it, is what we expect a Labour government to do. The bad stuff that Labour's been doing (their committment to the scam of PPIs, for example) goes crossgrained against what we expect of Labour governments: it's more like what we learned to expect from a Conservative government.

The last time the US got caught up in a stupid war, the Labour PM at the time managed to keep the UK out of it. No British soldiers were sent to die in Vietnam.

No jump for the Conservatives because everyone knows that on the bad stuff they'd be just as bad, or even worse, and there's not a chance they'd ever do the good stuff.

But that - the fact that the bad stuff Labour has been doing is what we'd expect of a Conservative government - is the source of the claim that there's really no difference between them.

Of course there is. It's really why I'm so annoyed at the prospect of the next General Election: I don't want to vote Labour, I don't want the Conservatives to get in, I can see that Labour in power with a strong LibDem in opposition is the best we can hope for in the UK Parliament... and I don't see how to make it happen. Short of funding a campaign for extreme tactical voting in about a hundred constituencies.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

We don't hear about it because it's the sort of stuff that only appeals to people who would never in a million years vote for Michael Howard. Labour's PR is directed wholly at people who might vote Tory if they thought Labour was spending taxes on stuff that would benefit society as a whole, and who are only interested in Tory Lite policies (Educational 'choice', tough on crime, PFIs, etc, ...).

But now and again I think you're right, it is worth reminding everyone that, however bad this Labour government is, the alternative is far, far worse.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

A lot of the whinging which comes from long-term labour supporters is down to them being prepared to be radical in their first term - signing the social chapter, bringing in the minimum wage, some really distributive policies like tax credits ... but lately, what do we get? The third term is about "choice" ... dangerous nonsense aimed at the wavering middle class well-off.

Add Iraq to that and you've got a government which is tossing its core support into the gutter.