Local government is still oppressing British communities with absolutely no opposition from the left wing. In fact there are many sectarian far left-wingers who care nothing about democracy involved in this oppressive process.
Things on the regeneration front in Kensington have gone from bad to worse. The chair of the New Deal initiative Bishop James Jones and the £57,000 per year chief executive Stephen Boyle have gone. Boyle will probably walk into an even better paid regeneration job, even though he has failed here in Kensington. These senior administrators, who are part of a nation wide old boys brigade, are rewarded for failure. Community participation is practically none existent with only 30 or 40 people now involved and at least half of them are cronies. It’s really a sham and a classical example of how British communities are oppressed by local government. Only 30 or 40 community members involved, out of an NDC community that encapsulates 14,000 residents.
Out of a NDC board of at least 25 only 10 are community members and the senior suburbanite administrators have indoctrinated most of them to such an extent that they actively participate in their own subjugation by these same administrators. It is really nauseatingly embarrassing to observe the behaviour of the community board members and the community cronies; these guys believe that whatever the administrators say is absolute. The community board members have now become strangers in their own community.
There are now 35 highly paid New Deal regeneration administrators and community workers, most of whom live in the prosperous suburbs. They have totally isolated themselves from the wider community and they now tell the community what the community needs. In effect they outnumber the community activists and as such solely run the NDC intuitive. The wider community don’t know what is going on.
I’m off to a convention in Birmingham tomorrow. The theme of the convention is “The Regeneration Game.” The convention has been put together by a government agency called niace, which stands for the National Institute for Adult and Community Education. I managed to get a bursary for three Kensington residents (two highly respected community activists who wont take any crap from the administrators) and myself. Niace is run by teachers and one of them, Jane Thomson, who has written several books, will be promoting her latest book, “The Regeneration Game.” This book is highly critical of community participation and empowerment in the UK. One of Jane Thomson’s colleagues Lenford White, who is a black teacher who lived as a child in the Toxteth Granby area of Liverpool, wrote a book last year and dedicated eight pages of the book to what I have been doing in exposing the dreadful behaviour of the City Council and all the other administrative agencies on Merseyside, including Kensington.
Out of a NDC board of at least 25 only 10 are community members and the senior suburbanite administrators have indoctrinated most of them to such an extent that they actively participate in their own subjugation by these same administrators. It is really nauseatingly embarrassing to observe the behaviour of the community board members and the community cronies; these guys believe that whatever the administrators say is absolute. The community board members have now become strangers in their own community.
There are now 35 highly paid New Deal regeneration administrators and community workers, most of whom live in the prosperous suburbs. They have totally isolated themselves from the wider community and they now tell the community what the community needs. In effect they outnumber the community activists and as such solely run the NDC intuitive. The wider community don’t know what is going on.
I’m off to a convention in Birmingham tomorrow. The theme of the convention is “The Regeneration Game.” The convention has been put together by a government agency called niace, which stands for the National Institute for Adult and Community Education. I managed to get a bursary for three Kensington residents (two highly respected community activists who wont take any crap from the administrators) and myself. Niace is run by teachers and one of them, Jane Thomson, who has written several books, will be promoting her latest book, “The Regeneration Game.” This book is highly critical of community participation and empowerment in the UK. One of Jane Thomson’s colleagues Lenford White, who is a black teacher who lived as a child in the Toxteth Granby area of Liverpool, wrote a book last year and dedicated eight pages of the book to what I have been doing in exposing the dreadful behaviour of the City Council and all the other administrative agencies on Merseyside, including Kensington.
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