Monday, 14 January 2019

How Barnet's Arthur Daley culture has wrecked our local council

Older readers of this blog will fondly remember the TV series 'Minder', that featured George Cole as Arthur Daley. Daley was a spiv who got by selling dodgy second hand cars and other knocked off goods. As part of my research, I came across an episode of Minder that has large sections filmed in the Borough of Barnet, at Scratchwoods services, and a scene on the road navigating Staples Corner.


The episode features actor/musician Mark Farmer, best known for his role in Grange Hill, but a talented musician, who also played bass with Bad Manners. Sadly Mark passed away in 2016. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the episode, as Arthur Daley enters the world of ticket touting, only to find he's bought a bunch of fake tickets from a washed up player eking out a last payday at Brentford.

It is interesting to see how culture and society has changed since the mid 1980's when this was filmed. As an experiment, I asked my 18 year old what a Spiv was. His reply? "Is it a sort of knife?". I was thinking about Spiv culture. I am sure that Arthur Daley would thrive in the year 2018. The internet would offer endless opportunities. At this time every year, in our music shop we see a procession of people coming in with dodgy, unplayable guitars that they bought on the Internet. Nearly all came through the shop in November and December looking for Xmas presents. Nearly all had care, advice and service. Nearly all promised to come back and purchase the guitar we advised, having taken our time and tried our instruments. Now they come back with a guitar they bought on the Internet, asking how to sort out the myriad of problems.  Some even claim they bought the instrument from us, but don't have a receipt and strangely there is no record of this on our system. They are horrified when they find out that simply to make the instrument playable, they will have to pay anything between £30-£100. Some are simply fit for the bin. It is called a false economy. We take great delight in reminding them that we warned them that whilst we maintain customers guitars free of charge as party of the service warranty, the ones bought elsewhere are charged at £25 per hour to fix, plus parts. They realised that the £15 or whatever they saved was not a saving at all.

The modern day Arthur Daleys, don't drive around in Jags and have a smooth patter, business is conducted via the internet, where price is king and if something doesn't work, you just send it back. Recognition of quality it seems is an ever disappearing feature of life. It's not just when we buy consumer products that this race to the bottom has taken a grip. All over the Borough of Barnet, we've seen the same pattern as our bins are unemptied, our roads are pockmarked with potholes, our streets are full of litter, graffiti is everywhere and if you need to call the council, you better book a long lunch as it takes forever to navigate the switchboard, be held in a queue and actually talk to anyone.

The reason? Well it all dates back to the days of Arthur Daley. When Arther was plying his trade, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister and she brought in the mantra of Privatisation. Thatcher had three main philosophies. They were

1. Taxes should be as low as possible.
2. The private sector should replace the public sector in provision of services.
3. Councils should only provide housing as a matter of last resort for those who genuinely can't afford accomodation from the private sector.

Today we are probably seeing the low tide mark of these policies. Thatcher believed that the "dynamism of the free market" would provide better, cheaper solutions to the problems facing the country than regulated, state run national industries. The list of industries privatised by the Conservative governments of 1979-1997 is quite incredible.

1970s

1980s

1990s

It is fascinating to look through the list and ask ourselves how many of these organisations are now viewed as providing better, cheaper services. At a guess, I'd say that most people would say that the airports, BT and National Express buses are decent enough. The Railways and the service/costs of energy companies are constantly held as examples of what is wrong with privatisation. I am not completely ideologically opposed to privatisation and outsourcing. I think sometimes it is the best way to sort things out. Where it doesn't work is where there is a monopoly and where it goes horribly wrong is when it is simply done out of misguided ideological zeal.

I run a company, I've even provided services to Barnet Council in the past. But that is because we are specialists and good at what we do. Barnet Council has been run since 2006 by hard right ideologues who simply refuse to accept that some things should not be run by private companies. Since 2010, we've been in a cycle of decline otherwise known as "One Barnet". When this was first mooted, we were told that this would result in lower council tax bills. A mega deal was signed with Capita, which was worth a billion quid over ten years. Sadly much of the savings are illusory, services have declined, the council couldn't even manage to meet statutory deadlines for recent audits, as Capita couldn't provide reliable information. Sadly the Capita contract has become like the dead parrot in the Monty Python sketch. It is dead, but the leaders of the Council cling to the idea that the whole scheme is in vigorous good health. Recently, they signed a deal with Capita, where they were paid £4 million in cash as compensation for over £20 million of savings, contractually guaranteed, that never arrived. How on earth anyone can think getting such a paltry sum for such a major contractual defect is a result is beyond me, but that is exactly how the regime of Richard Cornelius has portrayed it.

Another part of this toxic mix is the obsession with lower taxes. No one wants to pay more than they should for anything, but when it comes to public services, schools, street cleaning, bin emptying, do we want an Arthur Daley service? If I am hungry, there are a myriad of offerings on Mill Hill Broadway. If I want something to simply satisfy my hunger, I can pay around a quid for a bag of greasy chips. I do this on the odd occasion, usually when I stagger out of the Mill Hill Services club and am peckish. But if I had this for every meal, every day, I'd soon get all manner of associated health problems. That is why most of the time, I only eat fresh food, which  I prepare myself or if I eat out, I eat in restaurants that make decent, well cooked food. I don't eat out in fast food places or ones which simply produce low quality production line food (unless I am out with friends who insist)..

Sadly when Barnet Council set their budget, it is simply a diet of chips every meal. This is because the local Conservatives know that we've been brainwashed to believe that low taxes mean "we spend your money wisely". Any party proposing realistic taxation, to support decent services would get crucified at the polls. The mantra the Tories always deploy is "They are always happy to spend your money for you". But this has resulted in a situation where even basic services can no longer be provided reliably. The bin situation has demonstrated this. Recycling has all but stopped as the council desperately tries to clear the backlog caused by a defective plan. If you want a reliable car, do you go to a reputable dealer, or do you go to an Arthur Daley? It is the same with Council services. Historically, Barnet ran its services well. Before the One Barnet project, the then leader of Barnet Council used to boast that Barnet was rated as a  four Star Council. How many stars now, with tweets like this?



This is simply a symptom of what happens when you are not prepared to pay enough money for the important things in your life. If you don't want to pay the amount of tax that is required to run a council, this is what happens. Chips every day will kill you!

The final part of the jigsaw of decline is what Thatchers policies have done to our housing stock. When my parents were married in 1945, they applied for council housing. As my Dad was in the Air Force, they eventually got a place in Wise Lane in Mill Hill, I believe in 1948. That began our families long association with Mill Hill. In 1960, as my father's business was doing well, they bought a home and another family moved in to their old council house. Council housing was where most young couples started their married life. My eldest Brother was given a council flat in Gunter Grove in Burnt Oak in the early 1970's when he married. By the time I was ready to leave home, the Thatcher government had started to rewrite the rules. I have always had a few pennies in my pocket. When I was 21, I got a great job working for an IT consultancy. I went down the "rent a private flat route". By the time I was 25, I had enough cash to buy a four bedroom semi in Mill Hill (£47,000). I still live there, it is probably worth £800,000. When I bought it I worked for BT and earned £18,000 a year as a basic salary, the mortgage company said they'd pay up to three times my salary, I paid a £4,700 deposit (ten percent). This was manageable. By the same rules, I'd have to earn about £275,000 a year and have £80,000 in the bank as a deposit. It is simply impossible.

The reason is simply because the Thatcher dream of home ownership has strangled the supply chain of new homes. Councils stopped building, developers realised they could make more money sitting on land than developing it and now we have an impossible situation. If anyone ever manages to fix the supply side issues, there is a real prospect that everyone who has bough a home in the last ten years will be sitting on massive negative equity. In short, we have priced our children out of the market, and we simply don't care. The Arthur Daley's of the world realised that property, not cars and fake perfume are the best way to turn a quick buck. And best of all it's all perfectly legal.

There are thousands of people on the council waiting list for homes, all local people who need somewhere to live. They are out of luck, because in Barnet, we simply don't want to spend any money to have a cohesive community. Our pubs are being redeveloped, our libraries downsized, our roads are in an appalling state. Perfectly good paving stones replaced with cheap asphalt. Never mind though. We've all got computers so we can console ourselves with repeats of Minder on Youtube.

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2 comments:

Nail on the Head said...

What an excellent post!

Everything I want to say but said with a clarity that is crystal clear and beyond reproach!

Please send post to Barnet Council and Capita/Re officials for all to read.

They do not seem to grasp what a mess Barnet is in now. Bingate is just a physical manifestation of the stink that is pervading the whole of our beautiful borough and ripping it to pieces.

No star council...Barnet has been mismanaged beyond belief!

Now what can be done to restore the equilibrium and who can do it?

14 January 2019 at 13:21
Anonymous said...

Well done on the blog ! The situation with the selling of council property is a national disgrace. The whole idea was to give young families a chance & to become a worthy part of our wider society, as with your parents when there social circumstances changed they moved on ! I believe firmly that working towards owning your home as to be a worthy aspersion ! But there was a huge mistake made with it . What should have happened that at point of sale the council should of have the right to buy back the property at the discount that it was sold at & a no Let clause should have been put in & then we would Not Be In the position we are now in . By allowing hundreds of thousands of council houses to enter the private market it led to the building of less private building , hence the mess we are now in keep up the good work all our blogging team J

14 January 2019 at 19:28

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