Hammersmith and Fulham Council Tories

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. 

As we have been reporting, the Hammersmith Law Centre will lose 60% of its funding in cuts voted for by the Tory Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Thousands of poorer people in the borough will lose access to the free legal advice and representation that the centre has provided for nearly 30 years.

This site is adding interviews with people who have gone to the law centre for legal help and advice over the years. Law centre clients are often immigrants and people seeking asylum.

Below, law centre client Salah Almesaouil talks a bit about moving to London. He has been a client of the law centre for some years, and had help with Home Office and housing problems.

Salah Almesaouil is a small, witty guy from Syria who lives with his wife and eight young children in a three-bedroom council flat in a West London block called Hamlet Gardens. 'Good flat,' he says, as his four littlest kids stampede through it. 'Bit small, maybe, for ten of us living here. Bit small.'

He's not complaining about his general direction of travel, though: the UK remains a land of opportunity as far as he is concerned, and he and his kids are taking it.

His three eldest - teenagers Heba, Mohamad and Hamza - are doing well in school, particularly in the scary subjects: Heba is studying A-level chemistry, physics and maths, Mohamad, is taking A-levels in maths, applied science and computing, and Hamza is sitting GCSEs in science, double science, maths, English language and literature, RE, design and technology, history, French and Arabic.

They want to be doctors and computer engineers and that kind of thing. Almesauouil is a happy Dad.