Friday, November 04, 2005

A CITY FOR US ?

"Clean Up The Drunks", the headline read on the front page of the DomPost Weekend. It was nothing new that was being stated, just a tired old theme of bashing the homeless and the associated moral panic that the media fans as the economy shows signs of cracking.

What were the campaigners for a sanitised city comparing us with in the capital? Obviously new MP Blumsky had not lived through the prosperity of the sixties and seventies to know that it wasn't a City looking second rate but the economy. It was the outcome of the free market that had left more people on the streets. Mr Blumsky had been a promoter of big business and the champion of the abolition of the rates differential. Make the residents pay for business was the motto of this new group of boosters and promoters who took hold the the public purse. Wellington Alive stormed the city with the shoe man Blumsky holding the flag of the Council's new right.

Lower rates for business and fewer council houses was the agenda under Blumsky. The Council became ambivalent about the role of housing as a core service. Nothing was done to upgrade the housing stock and tenants were made to feel insecure with the Council housing review.

Clearly Blumsky was a factor in creating the new climate of intolerance of the causalties that the right had engineered. Now he proclaims a cleanup.

1 Comments:

Blogger Warwick Taylor said...

Right on, Bryan. Mark Blumsky, Kerry Prendergast and many other councillors set up a city for the latte set and the capitalist class. A bit rich of someone to be talking about drunks.

2:14 AM  

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