We shouldn't ignore the poverty in our own country

dr cromarty

I used to do home visits as a doctor in Easterhouse a wee while back. I wore casual gear, had my stuff in a holdall and took black cabs.

Why? To wear a jacket and tie and carry a briefcase would risk a doing (you were either a policeman a social worker or a doctor). To leave one's car out would risk its destruction depending on the part of Easterhouse.

Now, what adjective would the MSP like to use for the area?

mac

Self-righteous troglodytes like Gordon are concerned about the inhabitants of these estates only to the extent that their votes perpetuate the one-party fiefdom that allows the likes of Gordon to flourish.

Keep exposing the hypocrisy, Fraser.

(original mac)

Rhoda Klapp

No place can be completely bad which has a jeely piece club.

Seriously, stick to your guns. They haven't fixed it because a) They don't want to fix it, or b) the people who live there don't want it fixed. The censure is obviously a badge of honour.

Terry Wulfrun

Surely the reason some get upset about Africa but not these estates is because the people in these estates have precisely the same opportunities afforded to us all. That they're content to waste their lives on benefits is their choice.

kinglear

But this is typical of Labour especially throughout Scotland - as the SNP shouted at the by-election when someone said " we always vote Labour" " Aye and see where it got you"
Personally, all the money that gets sent to Africa etc should be sent to the deprived areas in the UK. I'm willing to bet if it was properly targetted and focussed it would do a lot more good.

Philip Wright

Tom Harris is just an ignorant NuLab apparatchik with his head stuck so far up up Brown's a*** he can see his famous rictus grin from the inside.

If the money that Labour has so graciously given to these estates in Glasgow has been so beneficial why did they get such a bloody nose in the Glasgow East by-election?

They are now so used to the stench of the ordure that they have created that they wouldn't be able to see the truth, never mind admit it, even if it was in 30ft neon lights over Castlemilk and Easterhouse.

George Laird

Dear Fraser

“I am in the process of being formally denounced by the Scottish Parliament for remarks I made on CoffeeHouse last week - that Castlehouse and Easterhouse were "beautiful names, but scummy estates".”

I am sorry that you are being formally denounced by if it is any consolation, it is only Charles Gordon and he is an idiot.

“An MSP named Charlie Gordon has found time in his busy schedule to table a motion against what he read on the blog. So far, it has 11 signatures. It reads as follows:
That the Parliament notes that the journalist, Fraser Nelson, in comments on The Spectator magazine’s Coffee House blog on 30 January 2009, referred to Castlemilk and Easterhouse as “… beautiful names, scummy estates”; draws Mr Nelson’s attention to motion S3M-1561, which celebrated the award-winning Castlemilk Stables project, a regeneration project that produced a building awarded Scotland’s Best Building 2008 for best practice in conservation and sustainability through design excellence; also draws his attention to motion S3M-2184, which celebrated Castlemilk High School’s 2008 HM Inspectorate of Education report, which awarded the school six excellent ratings, the best ever achieved by a Glasgow school, and to motion S3M-3286, which highlighted the recent award of the Evening Times International Scotswomen of the Year title to Mary Miller, a former Castlemilk resident and founder of the outstanding Jeely Piece Club in Castlemilk; further notes the many outstanding regeneration projects in Easterhouse, and considers that Mr Nelson’s rudeness towards the communities of Castlemilk and Easterhouse is outstripped only by his ignorance of them. “

This is just grandstanding; he is doing his man of the people claptrap, Labour does it all the time in Glasgow. No one is dumb enough up here to fall for it.

“As I say in my political column today, trawling the internet for words to denounce is not atypical behaviour from idle MSPs like Gordon. Tom Harris has joined in the fun today. I've said my piece on this in the magazine - focusing on education. It was in this context that I made the remarks that so offended Charlie Gordon. People are dying years before their time in these estates, sucked into a life of drugs or welfare dependency - and no one gets angry. Rabbi Lionel Blue once called it moral long-sightedness: the ablity to focus on poverty in Africa, or the effects of global warming, but be blind to the heartbreaking deprivation outside your own doorstep. But Scottish Labour isn't just blind to it, they are attacking anyone who points it out”.

As someone brought up in the Labour ghettos of Glasgow, I agree with you, the problem is that Labour has ruined Glasgow.

“Or pretending that, when I said "scummy estates" I was somehow referring to the poor souls who have to live in these welfare ghettoes”.

Gordon wants people to love him and then they might forget he was paying his son a package out of the public purse.

“I used to support devolution thinking that London was ignoring these estates - that it kept shovelling regeneration cash there, congratulating themselves on some useless arts centre, then leaving the people of east Glasgow in what could be a hideous social experiment. Wait until Scotland has its own parliament, I thought, then we can start to focus on the poverty we see in the estates of Dundee and Glasgow. These places will have new, fresh heroes I thought - they'll come up with some fresh thinking”.

The Scottish Parliament was designed to stop the SNP ever getting a majority but the apple cart got upset last May when the SNP was the largest party.

“How naive I was. Castlemilk's first MSP was "Lord" Mike Watson - a party hack who was only ennobled to assuage some spat about selection for a safe Westminster seat. They dumped him on Glasgow Cathcart for Holyrood instead. He bowed out of the political scene when imprisoned for arson - he burned down a pair of curtains in a hotel (and got caught on CCTV). Bold new local heroes indeed. His successor is Charlie Gordon, who was last in the news when he was found to have sent £13,000 of public money to his son's internet firm”.

Lord Watson has done his time so even although I support the SNP, I am minded to ask let’s not have a witch hunt. Watson did wrong and paid the price. I would have no problem in giving someone a fresh start, provided they have changed.

“What mystifies me is that stronger words are not used about Castlemilk and Easterhouse - because the poverty in there - this hideous, hugely expensive poverty - is a national outrage. Why do we tolerate such levels of deprivation? When did we become inured to it?”

Poverty was accepted because it was too easy to ignore, when you were tripping the light fantastic about in the GUU of Glasgow University as a tory, you never really ventured out.

“Are we so socially segregated that we can get hugely upset and wear wristbands for Africa, yet not care for those fellow nationals whose life expectancies are closer to the third world than the UK national average?”

Yes, very much disconnected, but if you think about the common thread of Labour and the Tories, it is that the underclass have to be “managed”. Why do you think benefit fraud and error are linked together?

It is to portray working class people as scum.

“British poverty has become unmentionable, the people in these estates are forgotten. They are literally not counted in the unemployment figures. They're given welfare, sent to live in these estates, and forgotten”.

It is cheaper than sending them to prison; a Glasgow housing ghetto is a large open prison where the inmates can wander about as long as they don’t cause too much trouble.

“There are 129 MSPs in Holyrood. Yet it was an Englishman named Iain Duncan Smith who was so shocked by what he saw in East Glasgow that he formed the "Easterhouse Agenda" with radical thinking on welfare reform. That agenda became the Centre for Social Justice which became the Conservative Party's guiding welfare principle”.

And what did David Cameron do about that? He planted May in the Work and pensions role, obviously help for the lowest in society gets a third rate can’t be bothered lemon.

“I wonder if, in their more reflective moments, the likes of Charlie Gordon and Tom Harris ever ask themselves why it was Iain Duncan Smith - not them - who got really angry about the poverty in their constituency and decided to do something about it”.

No, they are a pair of clowns who want to keep their manufactured gerrymandered Labour ghettos safe in ignorance and voting for them.

“But to do what IDS did takes energy, imagination and determination. Slagging off those of us who draw attention to poverty there is so, so much easier”.

And less time consuming Fraser!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Exegi monumentum aere perennius

Fraser - by "some useless arts centre" you wouldn't have in mind 'The Public' in West Bromwich by any chance?

£65 million of taxpayers money sunk into a hideous pink monstrosity in the middle of Sandwell - one of the most impoverished boroughs in the West Midlands (and whose residents have consistently said they would rather the money been spent on a new swimming baths instead).

Meanwhile, like Easterhouse, the Borough's Soho & Victoria ward ticks all the most egregious boxes when it comes to multiple social deprivation.

GV

To act positively on deprived communities means one has to acknowledge failure to address the hardships. They'll never do this; they'll never admit they got it wrong. You've heard of 'beer goggles'? Well, now meet 'socialist goggles'.

Fraser Nelson

Terry, I disageee - they have simply walked the road the welfare state has paved for them. It's complex poverty, but these are still our people.

Kinglear, the problem is behavioural not financial. We have to stop incentivising self-destructive behaviour in the name of compassion.

Doug

Well said Fraser. But I've not given up on the Scottish Parliament yet. Especially after Labour were kicked out of office. Thank God! Now we just need the SNP to learn the same lessons the Tories learned. They are after all governing neophytes.

strapworld

Mr Nelson.

This man typifies many politicians. They ignore poverty. As a former Chairman of a Poverty Action Group and a local councillor, I can tell you that most councillors would not accept the absolute facts on poverty and homelessness. Heads in Sand-

But, it is worse, by ignoring it they do nothing about it.

Well written and keep it up. Each City/town even village and hamlet has poverty within them and politicians of all parties are ignoring it.

Indeed, with the benefit society fed by this incompetent and almost criminal government, Labour have actively allowed poverty to increase!

Dunc in Glasgow

You are correct Fraser, no politician ever mentions these schemes, it's as if they don't exist at all. Perhaps you could get together with Duncan-Smith.

EC

The Labour Party Gulags are a human tragedy writ large in every gerrymandered 'traditional' Labour town, city, metropolitan or urban area in the UK.

"In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king."

The question that people in these areas should be asked is "What has 100 years of voting Labour done for us?"

AndyLeeds

Fraser you really are a silly boy. Don't you realize that Labour loves these ghettos. They created many of them and as George points out 'the problem is that Labour has ruined Glasgow' and every other damn thing they touch.

Radical welfare reform is a must.

Diogenes

"Charity begins at home" should be stuck in 20 foot high neon lights outside Parliament and the ODA. It's scandalous that millions of UK taxpayers' hard earned money is sent all over the world, including China and God know which Islamic states, as well as the basket case that is Africa, while we have millions of our own citizens living in poverty. It's a typical socialist sick joke. Why do they hate their own people so much.

Emil

The welfare state, as operated by this government, keeps people in poverty.(**)

When are people going to wake up and smell the coffee and realise the damage politicians of all parties have wreaked on society to make themselves look caring, whilst few of them give a damn, including 10% tax snatcher Brown?

(**) poverty is living in shanty towns in South Africa and other countries. Use of the word for most people in this country is nothing more than political soundbite.

Alf Tupper

Visited Liverpool, 'Capital of Culture' last weekend. Had a lovely time, somewhat soured by the fact that when I returned to the car, all four wheels had gone and it was left resting on a couple of Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs

CS

***Surely the reason some get upset about Africa but not these estates is because the people in these estates have precisely the same opportunities afforded to us all.***

Terry, that's blinkered nonsense. We all know that a good education in the UK requires either cash or a good postcode.

Do the kids on these estates get the same chances in life as, say, Cameron's kids or Blair's kids? If you're brought up in a chainsmoking alcoholic household, do you get the same health chances as kids in nice middle class avenues?

Some of our own people have got a Third World life expectancy and we just shrug it off as not our problem?

kinglear

Fraser - I agree it is behavioural. But what is needed is a carrot to make these deprived people want better lives. In the old days, even in the worst places in Glasgow,parents wanted their children to get an education and "get on" It is the lack of that ambition now ( and caused by years of dire schooling) and Labour in Glasgow's keeping peop-le down that has brought this about

Richard

I recall sitting in a coffee shop in Glasgow a while ago with my sister. She's a nurse who works in the city.

A disabled woman walked past the window with the aid of two sticks. 'Do you know what that is?' asked my sister.

'Yes.' I replied. 'She's been in an accident and her legs are broken'.

'She's had rickets.' said my sister.

Welcome to Glasgow in the 21st Century. Lower life expectancy than the Gaza strip and Victorian diseases into the bargain. Hopefully Charlie will find time to celebrate that in between claiming his expenses.

Laura

Of course you're being denounced, Fraser. Anyone who brings attention to this sort of thing is shouted down as if they are worse than the politicians who allow it to go on. This is how the Labour playbook works. These people have votes to get. How can they get votes if you're drawing attention to their politcal shortcomings? Naughty you.

Politicians care for Africa not because they think it helps Africans (we all know most of the money goes to pay for shoes for the corrupt leaders' wives over there, not into the mouths of the starving) but because it gives them a rare chance to advertise moral authority. Now how could these politicians advertise moral authority standing in some cesspit of an estate that they have so neglectfully let fester?

They need some moral authority as politicians and so since they're not going to get it here, they use Africa to get it.

Sneaky, these politicians, aren't they?

Devolution has deprived Scotland and Wales of sensible voices like yours, Fraser. That was the point of devolution: to wipe out the Right completely in these countries and leave the Marxoids of Scottish Labour and the SNP in power.

Now devolution is here it must stay but we must hope the Right in these countries can rebuild themselves and get their countries out of this Marxoid headlock.

Fraser Nelson

Doug, I do tend to agree with you - that for all the tragicomedy of the first ten years of devolution it will be self-correcting and Scotland will, one day, get the parliament it deserves.

Graeme Archer

Bravo.

Alexandrovich

You see Fraser? You're attacked unfairly so reply with sincerity and passion. That elicits a positive response from all on this thread. Now, if you could just get the boy Dave to grasp this idea...

Best of luck for the interview.

Pete, Scotland

Spot on Fraser.

I know these places, there are plenty of nice, decent people trying to make the best of a hellish situation from which they cannot escape.

If Charlie Gordon thinks you are wrong, challenge him to live there for a year, anonymously, without all his publically financed comforts.

I really am sick of all these champagne socialists.

Wilhelm

Wee Charlie Gordon is a not very bright liebour pudding and can be dismissed as such.The Glasgow liebour mafia cam squeeeel from the roof tops in protest but the fact remains Glasgow looks like Dresden 1945 and thats the way liebour wants to keep it, thats where they get their votes. the liebour sswamp.

Wilhelm

Fraser

Ps . Tom Harris is a liebour clown, he's got his snout in the westminster trough, oink oink, grunt, squeel, oink.

Also the Scottish media and press is the liebour party fan club with typewriters.

Craig Strachan

Fraser: "Scotland will, one day, get the parliament it deserves."

Sounds ominous.

(I mind when Charlie Gordon was just a wee bit o' a regional councillor. And look at what has become of him now.)

Steve

Fraser. I sgree with your position on this one. Having spent 15 years living in one these sinkholes of despair in Liverpool, I am convinced this is one the most important social issues facing the country.

The Speccie readership, by its very nature, is likely to be on your side, but I can't help feeling this needs a bigger push to get it into the mainstream of public opinion. Can't you get the News of the World onside to give it more oomf.