Stephen Greenhalgh

Why the Tories will forever be old hat.

Hello, all.

This lengthy piece (tis a bit long - got carried away) is the first in a number that will look at Conservative behaviour on the ground. Yours truly wonders if the Tories are fit for public office, exactly, and/or if social responsibility is really their bag...   

This week, staff at Tory council Hammersmith and Fulham will meet to organise a response to the latest attack by the council's Conservative leadership. What a distasteful attack this one is, too - all council staff have been told they will be dismissed and forced to sign new employment contracts on much-reduced terms and conditions. 

So.

I know exactly how the Tory trollies among you will greet this news: you'll say (sans deliberation, as always) that lazy, fat arsed public sector staff - those you doubtless imagine operate the schools, housing offices, libraries, street cleaning and social services at Hammersmith and Fulham - deserve it (do you class bankers as fat arsed, overindulged public sector workers now, btw?). You'll say that public sector workers deserve the awful hours, and the lack of union representation and employer sympathy and flexibility that your average working stiff in the private sector gets. 

Just heard that all 4200 employees at Hammersmith and Fulham council have been issued with redundancy notices, as the charming Tory council there pushes through new contracts and worsened terms and conditions.

My contacts tell me the unions have been told that staff must sign new contracts, or get lost.

You can expect standards in care, education, and housing services, etc, in Hammersmith to take a dive (if they continue at all) from now on.

Have a look at this if you want to know more about the terrible effects that Tories cuts are having on staff and public services at local councils. Don't EVER buy into David Cameron's fluffy Tories salespitch - these people are vicious, and interested only in destroying the health, education and care services that people who aren't fillthy rich (ie most of us) need.

Am going to do some interviewing this weekend on this, so will be back with more soon. 

This is the latest article in a series about Hammersmith and Fulham Council's cutting of funding to voluntary sector organisations, and its targeting in particular of the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre, which is about to lose 60% of its funding.

There are links to the earlier articles in this series at the end of this story. There are also links to the Conservative blogs that have been discussing this issue and these posts.

Community law centres aren't always popular with the national and local politicians that fund them, but surely that's par for the course?

Law centres were set up to provide free legal advice to people who can't afford to pay for legal help and representation. Often, these people are users of public services like immigration services, council housing, and welfare. And there are, unfortunately, times when these people are not given the right advice about their immigration, housing and welfare entitlements.

The truth is that government agencies and councils are as capable of cocking up as the rest of us, and on an awesome scale when they really give it a go. They wrongly deny people their entitlements to housing benefits, or at work, or they don't act on complaints with quite the vigour you'd hope.

And who can blame them for these shambles? Times ain't exactly high in the public-sector trenches. Frontline staff - people who know as much as anyone about the ways that complex benefits systems work and combine - are being culled at a majestic rate. God only knows what is happening at the Home Office. Councils are a riot

This story: the Cabinet at Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative Council meets to accept the Voluntary Sector Funding report which cuts funding to central and longstanding voluntary groups.

Photo: Hammersmith and Fulham Council leader Stephen Greenhalgh.

Introduction and background to the voluntary sector funding controversy at Hammersmith and Fulham

Photos from the protest at the Monday 16 April Cabinet meeting

Splendid scenes at Hammersmith and Fulham Town Hall this week, when several hundred furious locals shouted the council's largely pale and male Tory cabinet members out of the meeting hall, and down towards the Town Hall latrines - the very place (I'm sure I've got this straight) where the H&F Tories first spawned.

The locals had turned up to protest about the council's plans to cut ('prioritise' is the word that the Tories are using at the moment) funding to Hammersmith and Fulham's voluntary sector.

Groups that work very closely with some of Hammersmith and Fulham's poorest communities have lost all their funding, and they are not thrilled. The Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre - a group of 12 experienced and committed lawyers that has been the legal brain of the Hammersmith voluntary sector together for nearly 30 years, and so often successfully highlighted council and government uselessness - has lost 60% of its funding.