Jenkins "sleaze" charge over Guardian article

Guardian columist Simon Jenkins accused his own newspaper of having a too close relationship with the pathfinder housing demolition policy. In a column he complained that the paper had done an 8 page sponsored supplement to promote pathfinder.

The only voice quoted as objecting to pathfinder in the promotional piece was Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association. Apart from us the item was pretty much an advertisement for government policy.

Jenkins column points out that Rachman is alive and well in pathfinder projects throughout the north. However what was the point of a paid advertisement in the Guardian costing the taxpayer many thousands of pounds?

As this blog has already pointed out the finances of pathfinder don't add up. Pathfinder was started back in 1997 on the assumption that most victorian housing in the north was worthless and abandoned. However years of economic prosperity and, perhaps most significantly, the minimum wage have raised living standards and house prices. So called "abandoned" homes are in fact worth up to £100,000. To demolish 440 homes in central Gateshead will cost £40 million in compensation payments alone. That is using the lowest valuations.

Suddenly the policy of buying cheap to demolish became nonsense but unfortunately, like an oil tanker at full speed that takes hours to slow down even when you turn off the engine, the policy has not adapted to the new economic realities of the north.

Cash is now short in the pathfinders. Its costing more to buy people out and central government is in a spending squeeze. Hence the 8 page Guardian advert for pathfinder. An 8 page plea to continue funding and to push ahead with unpopular demolition policies that benefit the pathfinder industry, consultants, councils and millionaire property development companies. Now these pathfinders employ hundreds of bureaucrats on large salaries with no public scrutiny. The gravy train must be kept running.

The Guardian 8 page advert, published with Society, last Wednesday ignores the increase in employment in the north and higher salaries and instead says that pathfinder is responsible for regeneration, improved health, wealth and making the trains run on time. OK I made the last one up but the "editorial" certainly sounded like a sales pitch. Poor old Will Hutton was drafted in to stand by the masthead to make the 8 page advert look like real journalism without even visiting any of the pathfinders to find out what is really going on.

The pathfinder industry is desperate to keep the millions of taxpayer dosh rolling in. The propaganda machine is working overtime to produce happy smiling residents moving into new homes. What they fail to mention is the speculators moving in to price out local people and the increase in homelessness in pathfinder areas due to insufficient affordable housing.

Jenkins was right to draw attention to unaccountable quangos that run pathfinder and the extreme levels they are now going through to keep government cash flowing in to a mis-guided demolition strategy.


Links
Press Gazette
The Guardian

Cash Fear For Pendle Pathfinder

Many pathfinder programmes are further along than Saltwell and Bensham. However councillors in other areas are expressing concern that finance might slow or even stop.

Here in Gateshead some £40 million will be need to demolish 440 homes. Gateshead are already taking in "phases" lasting more than 5 years which would seem to kick some of the demolition process into the long grass.

Meanwhile back in Pendle "dramatic changes" were due in the next 12 months. However the fear of councillors are that insufficient money will be made available to sustain the programme.


Links
Pendle Today

MP Critcises Secret Housing Decisionmaking Process

The great claim made by ministers, local authorities and leaders of the pathfinder committees is how much community involvement informs decisionmaking. It is claimed that communities are consulted at every stage and that demolition is what communities want!

However there is a different story when communities actively question decisionmakers. The Leader of Gateshead Council recently criticised Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association for asking too many questions.

Unfortunately it is not just residents who have been excluded from information about pathfinder. While piles of glossy newsletters are delivered the simple process of getting the minutes of the meetings of BridgingNewcastleGateshead seems almost impossible. Jim Cousins, Member of Parliament for Newcastle Central, can't get his hands on minutes of meetings unless he sends in a Freedom of Information request for every single meeting. Twelve requests per year. A number of other pathfinders also fail to produce board meeting minutes.

When the minutes arrive they a blacked out due to "commercial confidentiality".

No wonder residents take a cynical view of their involvement in the pathfinder process since most of it is discussed in secret council meetings or secret meetings of the pathfinder board.

Having tried to keep pathfinder secret the government now wants to restrict Freedom of Information itself to just 4 requests per person per year. Thus making a nonsense of the word "freedom" and providing precious little "information".

The public along with Members of Parliament will now be excluded from asking questions of the secret state bodies that spend billions of public money each year.

Having sent troops to fight for democracy in Iraq it is frustrating to find decisions about the demolition of homes in Saltwell and Bensham excluded from the democratic process by the British practice of governing in secret.


Link
Inside Housing