Fire Sale

With our esteemed leader coming out and saying he wants a new "presumption" that public services will be open to be run by anyone with a bit of spare cash, the most depressing part is the numbing inevitability of it all.

What it does remind me is a conversation I had with a friend where we come to the conclusion that the likes of the people who make up the cabinet could well have been made in a factory, such is their apparent lack of actual humanity. Everytime I see Cameron on the box, I believe he's like some cyborg sent from the future and bases his actions and having video tapes of Tony Blair on a constant loop. The constant hand signals, the way he manages to speak for any length of time without actually saying anything meaningful. It's beyond bizarre.

In seriousness, what I do believe about the new political elite, and this goes across all the major parties, is that they have no actual idea about the real world. Of course, they can turf up at some inner-city school, nod gravely as some kid tells them their parents can't afford to buy a new uniform and then say some vague words on what must be done. But they don't actually know the world these families live in, because they've been protected from it their whole lives.

Which brings me to the kind of cuts that Manchester is having to go through, and how they effect lives. Some may think it's a simple matter of ditching the kind of "non-jobs" certain columnists get themselves into a state of frenzy over. Realities are very different. Issues such as Sure Start centres having their funding cuts reduces the chance of problems being prevented, making a social worker's job being one more of picking up the pieces.

I've got a couple of very good friends who work in Children's Services in Manchester. As I understand it, several of the contact workers that aid them in their jobs are on the way out. These are people who will handle any contact between Looked After Children and their birth parents - if they go, it has to be done by the social workers instead. On the face of it, not that much of a problem. Except it can sometimes take up half a day from picking the kid up to dropping them back at their carers, and when you have up to 30 children on your caseload, half a day is a huge part of your working week.

The concept of the 'Big Society' appears both vague and too simplistic. Nobody seems to know what it means, but it carries the assumption people will step in to fill the gaps. As Cameron won't know, real life doesn't work this way. Real life is too complicated for too many people. A small tax hike may not seem much to a millonaire, but it can maybe be the difference for somebody between going out on a Friday night or not. Might not seem much, yet people need to be able to relax, enjoy their leisure time and not just exist for nothing but work.

To quantify all of this, I'm fully aware how much of a great place to live the UK is for the most part. But I really believe it can be a whole lot better, especially for those at the bottom of the heap. Whether this is possible depends, I would imagine, on having politicans who have at least the smallest understanding of how us proles get by.