EVERYONE with any intelligence must realise that the Government’s ‘Respect’ agenda is a total load of public relations bull**** with bells on.
I struggled to stop giggling with subversive glee when I saw pictures of “plastic policemen� (community support officers) going walkabout with clipboard-wielding council wallies through the mean streets of Birkenhead.
What is going on here is not a serious attempt to halt our urban neighbourhoods’ slide into degeneracy, stupidity and petty criminality.
Rather it is the Government’s attempt to create yet more non-jobs in the public sector, and thereby a giant “votes bank� for Labour in areas where real (i.e. private sector) employment has virtually collapsed – namely Liverpool, Wirral and Knowsley.
It was a Full Show Business Launch for the Respect programme in Wirral.
Even the Government’s preposterous Respect Czar, Louise Casey, turned up to huff and puff about her Maoist / Blairite social engineering programme.
Liverpool, Wirral and Knowsley are among the first 40 Respect Zones to be created. So the Czar declared: “The first 40 areas have earned the right to be champions of the Respect programme.�
Oh, pur-lease, just p*** off back to London!
Now Wirral Council – or the 'Death Star’, as it is know locally, because it destroys everything it touches; you’ve only to look at what it has done to New Brighton – is to employ a full-time parenting expert at a cost to Wirral council tax payers such as me, of £30,000 a year. What a waste of money.
The state, at local and national level, just can’t stop interfering with the way people think, express themselves, and bring up their kids. It's outrageous.
It’s a kind of fascism-lite that could so easily lead us into an even worse state than we are now.
Already, Wirral Council has set up a sinister-sounding Family Intervention Project.
That means “problem families� can expect to have some earnest council employee with a sociology degree hanging around their homes like a bad smell for up to 20 hours each week.
Meanwhile, to give this disreputable and anti-working class programme a veneer of democratic respectability, Wirral Council is to organise ‘Face The People’ sessions, supposedly to “improve communication between residents, police and the council�.
I imagine what most people will want to say to the council and the plastic policemen is this: “Get out of my face!�
Closely followed by: “Why are you so useless at (a) collecting rubbish and litter (b) attracting employment to the peninsula and (c) running schools?�
* FINALLY, Some news for those who have been amused, inspired, annoyed and baffled by my recent poetry readings in certain pubs of Wallasey, particularly the Little Brighton and the Stanley’s Cask.
This week I have been writing a review of the week’s news, in the form of a poem, for BBC Radio Merseyside’s Breakfast programme.
It has been recorded and will be broadcast tomorrow (Fri 26 Jan) at around 6.40am or 6.45am apparently.
Yeah, like the hep cats who read this blog are going to be up in time for that!
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Annette Kalms wrote...
I agree with your comments, Steve. Can't help wondering how our parents and ourselves survived without someone telling us what to eat, what fumes to avoid and how to rear children. I really don't know how we all managed.
*** Exactly! SR.
Posted by: Annette Kalms | January 26, 2007 1:06 PM