Forum Topic

Council Targets Whistleblower in funding cuts

Article from local Chronicle show how vindictive this adminstration can behttp://tinyurl.com/2upw8re

Karen Cooper ● 5906d14 Comments

I don't want to appear callous but perhaps the first piece of advice that should be given to the homeless is don't seek to live in one of the most expensive and overcrowded boroughs in the country.Cuts have to be made and along with them some hard decisions. As the complaints made by this organisation formed the basis of a national press campaign against the Council there is the possibility that this group had their funding cut because they had become politicised.

Ellen Kearney ● 5899d

"There is the possibility that this group had their funding cut because they had become politicised".....of course they are politicised!!.....isn't housing a political issue?....and doesn't it become even more political when the council is found to be ignoring and/or breaking the rules to suit its own ends and ideology. And as for hard decisions, when is the council going to stop spending public money on its so-called newspaper?

Charles Lawrence ● 5899d

"And as for hard decisions, when is the council going to stop spending public money on its so-called newspaper?"Yes, and the Pyong-Yang style self-justifying propaganda hung from the bloody lampposts.  It's actually putting me off visiting Hammersmith now, how unwelcoming and unpleasant the atmosphere is.

Tom Barry ● 5897d

"Yes, and the Pyong-Yang style self-justifying propaganda hung from the bloody lampposts"....?Could you elaborate?

Charles Lawrence ● 5896d

a) some time last year nearly every lamp post down King St. had some kind of 'aren't H&F council brilliant' banner a couple of metres long on itb) a couple of weeks back I noticed that there were similar ones bragging about being voted Council of the Year 2010 by the LGC, as if that means anything, at the border crossing between the free West and Phibbsograd.Considering all this is while slashing everything in sight to pay for council tax cuts and selling useful things off, added to the h&f news idiocy (which even the Tories are dimly becoming aware of as an embarrassment) plus the dustcart I saw recently with something nannyish and unpleasant like 'RECYLING - IT'S A DUTY' written on it and it all smacks of a regime obsessed with its own image and promoting its libertarian ideology at the expense of its residents.  Nasty lot.

Tom Barry ● 5896d

Nasty lot indeed....I suspect they view the borough as some sort of experiment...

Charles Lawrence ● 5895d

Obviously there is a political element to working on behalf of the homeless but a group doesn't necessarily need to be politicised. If a Council funded entity chooses to feed stories to the national press to discredit the Council then it can hardly expect anything other than rigorous scrutiny when its funding comes up from review. There is obviously a danger that genuine whistle blowers could be silenced in this way but in this case a very distorted version of quite and old case was fed to the press with the timing designed to cause maximum impact at the election.

Ellen Kearney ● 5894d

One man's 'rigorous scrutiny' is another's 'cold-hearted revenge'.....and what about the Council's disgraceful behaviour in the two cases mentioned?....surely it was right for it to be publicised if only to make sure the Council does not shirk its legal obligations again.

Charles Lawrence ● 5894d

Agree it is a fine line between the two. The problem here seems to have been not the original complaints or indeed the publicity that resulted but that an attempt was made to make the cases a national cause celebre in advance of the election. From the Council's point of view the staff of the trust may or may not have instigated it but they probably thought why take the chance that the same thing would happen again and the funding was withdrawn.

Ellen Kearney ● 5893d

The council did not obey the law and are punishing the people who exposed them....in other words they are behaving like gangsters....it's beyond outrageous, isn't it? And the statement earlier in this thread that homeless people should not be in LBHF is none too impressive either.

Charles Lawrence ● 5893d

'the statement earlier in this thread that homeless people should not be in LBHF is none too impressive either.'I didn't say that but do you not think it would be sound advice to suggest looking somewhere else to live other than one of the most expensive and overcrowded areas in the country? Threshold advised single people so it is not as if there are issues of needed to be near children's schools etc.

Ellen Kearney ● 5890d

No...people don't generally plan to become homeless, it happens to them but they may be from LBHF or have other reasons for being here...the idea that homeless people shoould not be here sounds like sinister social engineering of the type the current Tory council is thought to be in favour of....out of sight, out of mind? And I don't understand what this means: "Threshold advised single people so it is not as if there are issues of needed to be near children's schools etc."

Charles Lawrence ● 5889d

'And I don't understand what this means: "Threshold advised single people so it is not as if there are issues of needed to be near children's schools etc."'As I understand it Threshold advised people who were single i.e. lived on their own so no kids or elderly dependent relatives.

Ellen Kearney ● 5888d

For a local authority to be obliged to house a single person they have to prove they have connections with the area. This Council with its deliberately policy of trying to minimise the number of people it houses is one of the quickest to reject any application. Organisations like Threshold were all that was making the Council stick to its legal obligations. Without them around many people who really do need housing locally will go without.

Karen Cooper ● 5887d