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Tonight, Chelsea and Liverpool square up at Wembley in the FA Cup Final; the Euros are only a month away; the Olympics come to town in just 12 weeks’ time… but where are the next generation of sportsmen and women going to come from?

The shadow hanging over school sport may have dimmed from political discourse of late, but it remains, as dark as ever, the future for millions of state school pupils ever bleaker. Ahead of our amazing summer of sport, a new documentary, funded by the Youth Sports Foundation, seeks to bring the issue back to the fore.

As the docu makers say:

“Too many young people in the UK live in fear because of gangs and weapons; too many young people lack mentors and constructive activities to fire their passion and ambition; and too many young people lead lifestyles that will cause serious health problems.

“The cost in human and economic terms is enormous.”

It features three young Londoners, Oli, Marlan and Iffath, who’ve turned around their lives and those of others through sport:

“‘Game’s Over’ is a documentary that offers an intimate portrait of the lives of three young people in the poorest borough of London, Tower Hamlets, whose lives have been transformed through participation in a scheme which offers access to sports, and the ability to train for a career in sports, for all children in the country.

“Against a backdrop of poverty, crime, and racial tensions, these young people have refused to conform to stereotypes, instead devoting their lives to teaching and inspiring a new generation of children in sports ranging from football to fencing.

“Oli turned his back on the gang that formed his social circle to run one of the scheme’s biggest clubs; Marlan has been able to support his young family with income earned as a sports teacher; and Iffath has helped to change views around racial and sexual prejudices, helping others to look beyond the hijab and see the football player inside.

“This film tells the inside story of school sports, how it affects lives and what the country stands to lose by abolishing it.”

Watch it:

As Left Foot Forward has long reported, the cuts to school sport are illogical, counter-productive and, as ever under this government, hit the poorest hardest:

• Sports minister: School sport “nothing to do with me… but the School Games are” 15 Dec 2011

• Cameron set for school sports climbdown 3 Dec 2010

• 2018 Wold Cup may be lost, but PM can still deliver a brighter future for school sport 2 Dec 2010

• UK Statistics Authority asked to look at government use of school sports stats 30 Nov 2010

• The devastating effect of Gove’s desire to take an axe to school sport 29 Nov 2010

• School sport cuts: “This isn’t ideology, it’s idiocy” 26 Nov 2010

• Miliband urges Cameron to “overrule” Gove’s school sport cuts 24 Nov 2010

• Scrapping School Sport Partnerships – ideology or idiocy? 22 Nov 2010

• World finally wakes up to coalition’s assault on school sport 22 Nov 2010

• Coalition’s aim for a “school sport revolution” in tatters after CSR 24 Oct 2010

• Minister calls for “school sport revolution” – yet DfE to face £670m of cuts 24 Sep 2010

The cuts to school sport, and the Cabinet’s complete, utter, total lack of understanding of their impact are amongst the starkest examples of just how out of touch senior ministers are, and their absolute inability to comprehend the effects of their decisions on ordinary, normal people.

Consider David Conn’s contrasting of the Cabinet’s school sports experience with that of the many:

“On the day of the spending review last month, Michael Gove, the education secretary, announced he was scrapping the plan to improve sport in schools.

“The schools, of course, are not private, like those attended by Gove (Robert Gordon’s), culture secretary Jeremy Hunt (Charterhouse), sports minister Hugh Robertson (King’s, Canterbury) – or the prime minister, David Cameron, whose alma mater, Eton, offers 12 squash courts, 20 tennis courts, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, four cricket fields, a nine-hole golf course, and rowing on the lake that will host the 2012 Olympics.”

Points reiterated by former England Test batsman Ed Smith:

“Top independent schools have spent massively on sports facilities. Even as a former professional cricketer, I’m dazzled – perhaps shocked – by their luxurious swimming pools and perfectly mown outfields. Some schools resemble five-star golf resorts.

“Many private schools have pitches fit for Olympians.”

Looking to the future, to London 2012, most shockingly of all, notes Smith:

“The proportion of British Olympic medallists who are privately educated has grown steadily over the past three Olympics to about 45 per cent. The trend is the same in rugby and cricket: more private-school England players, fewer State-school ones.

“If we could map social mobility within professional sport, it would show a clear downward trajectory. You would expect sport to be a model of meritocracy. It isn’t.”

As we build towards those Games, as we build towards that glorious fortnight, with the world watching, just what kind of legacy are we leaving for the young men and women of our country?

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By Annie Powell of Fair Pensions

If you were CEO of a company that had, by your own admission, delivered “unacceptable” shareholder returns, would you expect to receive a remuneration package of £17.7m? Probably not, but that is exactly the position in which Bob Diamond finds himself.

Diamond’s pay package prompted a shareholder revolt at Barclays’ AGM on Friday with 26.9% of shareholders using their advisory vote to protest against the remuneration report.

As remuneration votes go, this is a significant amount of dissent.

The Barclays AGM results, however, demonstrate the shortcomings of the government’s proposals to introduce a binding simple majority vote as an antidote to excessive pay (as discussed by Duncan Exley on Left Foot Forward, this is in contrast to previous plans to require special majority approval).

If a majority of shareholders are unwilling to use a mere advisory vote against a package as egregious as Diamond’s, making the vote binding is unlikely to provide the entire solution to the executive pay problem.

• Vince Cable’s efforts to moderate executive pay under attack 27 Apr 2012

• It isn’t ‘anti-business’ to oppose high pay for mediocrity 24 Feb 2012

• All in it together? RBS fat cat ‘in line for £7m payout’. Seven. Million 27 Jan 2012

• Cable fails to provide a stick or carrot in the fight against obscene pay 24 Jan 2012

• Three things Cameron should do if he’s serious about high pay 9 Jan 2012

The extent of this problem was highlighted during the recession when executive pay continued to soar while thousands lost their jobs and average wages stagnated. The effect of executive pay on increasing wage inequality in the UK is starkly demonstrated by Chart 1 which shows the percentage increase in CEO and average pay since 1998.

Chart 1:

The chart also shows how executive pay has increased out of all proportion to shareholder returns. In 2008/9, for example, FTSE 100 CEOs saw their base pay increase by 10% while the companies they ran lost almost a third of their value.

These inordinate pay packages not only waste money that could otherwise be used to increase dividends, they also compromise the success of the company: if executives are so well rewarded for mediocrity and even failure, there is little financial incentive for them to succeed.

This is bad news for the many of us whose pension pots and savings depend on the performance of FTSE 100 companies.

And herein lies the rub: if it is in shareholders’ interest to vote down excessive pay packages, why aren’t they being voted down more frequently? Part of the answer is that the asset managers who vote on behalf of many pension funds and savers do not properly represent their clients’ interests.

Asset managers are highly conflicted on pay: they are themselves very highly paid, and they often work for the asset management arm of financial conglomerates whose investment banking divisions act for FTSE companies. Voting against high pay would effectively be voting against their companies’ own clients.

To make matters worse, pension funds have been poor in holding their asset managers to account. For this reason, Fair Pensions has launched the Your Say on High Pay campaign to give ordinary savers a voice on executive pay.

Our online action tool allows people to email their pension fund and ISA providers directly; this email requests that the fund or provider asks their asset managers to vote against remuneration reports that contain certain unacceptable components, such as a bonus that exceeds 200% of base salary.

While pension funds and ISA providers are not obliged to act on the instructions of their members or customers, it is hard for them to ignore a groundswell of opinion on investment issues such as this; after all, it’s not their money.

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Tola A. Ositelu is a freelance arts and culture journalist based in London

You could be forgiven for walking past the Salvation Army centre on Albion Way, Lewisham without ever really noticing it. I have done so countless times, even though I have lived in the area almost all my life so far.

Since it was founded by William Booth in 1865, the Sally Army has been a part of the cultural landscape of many cities across the world. If you’re not in direct need of its services, or rummaging through the wares of its numerous thrift shops, its red and white motif can quite easily blend into the background.

Yet last August, this particular SA centre gained international notoriety when the scenes of carnage unfolding outside its doors were broadcast across the globe. It was, of course, the now familiar image of the summer riots that swept across the UK, descending upon this little corner of south-east London.

Captain Nigel Byrne, who manages the Lewisham corps, remembers the day with unsentimental precision:

“I had a colleague who rang up at seven o’clock that night and said ‘you better turn on Sky News, because your hall is all over it’. And of course there was a line of riot police just outside…”

We’re discussing the corps’ community work, ensconced in a cosy office adjacent to the charity shop that funds the many projects Nigel and his team run from the centre. Byrne has been a member of the organisation for three decades. He moved to Lewisham 18 months ago after spending several years in South Wales and Great Yarmouth.

There, he says, abject poverty and substance abuse see the Salvation Army even more in demand than in London.

Nigel is clearly very proud of the organisation’s history of reaching out to the disenfranchised. Booth and his supporters found abundant opportunity to put Christian charity into practice when the Army was established in 19th century east London. Prostitution and illegal drinking dens were rife. Booth is even credited with helping to campaign for an age of consent in the UK as a way of combatting child prostitution.

• Tackling homelessness in London 8 Apr 2012

• Out in the cold on Christmas day: The growing homelessness crisis 22 Dec 2011

• A third of the country could lose advice vital to preventing homelessness 19 Oct 2011

• Councils and Whitehall must work together to avoid a homelessness epidemic 12 Sep 2011

• Are Pickles and Shapps misleading the public on homelessness? 9 Jul 2011

As well as being a church, the Salvation Army has “a great, fine reputation for social work”, says Nigel:

“It flows from what we do as Christians; that is absolutely key. We’re in the middle of a borough that reflects some of the poorest parts of London, and some of the most difficult situations.”

Nigel regularly liaises with various agencies, from the Job Centre to homelessness charities such as Thames Reach:

“We don’t mind who you are. Age, race, gender, orientation, religion…if you appeal to the Salvation Army for help we’ll try and meet your need. We do that in ways that we’re able. Given that this is not a social service centre, if you want clothing we will clothe you, if you want food we will feed you.”

According to Nigel, the Salvation Army has always been ahead of its time:

“When people talk about this concept of food banks as a new thing, we’ve been doing that for many, many years. Other churches and particularly schools in the area give us packet and tinned goods at harvest time, and we collect all that in.”

With the proliferation of pound shops and supermarkets competing with each other over who can be the most budget friendly, cheap food is not in short supply. So, who are the recipients of this food aid?

Nigel is characteristically measured in his response:

“It depends really. What I find is that when people are referred from the Job Centre, often there’s a gap that’s occurred between the finish of one benefit and the start of another and they fall down that gap. There are people who just aren’t eligible, or don’t fit into the right criteria, who are then left without any means of support at all. That’s the point where we step in.”

The food parcels are only ever meant to be a short term solution until recipients can get back on their feet. Limited resources don’t allow for anything more.

Nigel explains:

“We can give up to three, but before we give them a fourth we would want to talk to them about their current circumstances. We’d try to advise them about what’s gone wrong. A basic food parcel should last three or four days for one individual. That should then be enough time for the new benefit to have kicked in.”

It is, perhaps, this very visible presence in the local community that spared the Albion Way centre being damaged during last summer’s civil unrest:

“When I came down the next morning the whole of the road was strewn with missiles, litter bins, burning cars, wreckage and what not. [But] this place was not touched. In fact even the missiles only came as far as the beginning of this porch. No windows broken. The textile bank, which is just outside, was full of clothes but it wasn’t set alight.”

He puts this down to the respect that people generally have for the Salvation Army:

“I think where we are situated and the type of work we do, people recognise that we’re not a target; we are on their side. There must have been something in the thinking… Although people seemed to behave that night as if there weren’t any boundaries anymore.

‘The day [after the riots] people popped into say ‘Are you all right? Any damage?’ I was then able to say to them ‘are you all right, any damage to where you are living?’ There are particularly vulnerable people in this immediate area; folk across the road [live in] a housing project that deals with the mentally ill.

“It must be dreadful living in a community where people are rioting directly outside your front door, when you’ve already got mental health challenges. You can only imagine how that would disturb. Part of our role here is to have a ministry to the people in this locality, and I’m pleased to say we do that quite well.’

Perhaps surprisingly, the riots and the mounting gloom of the current global financial crisis, Nigel insists, have not had any noticeable effect on the demand for the Salvation Army’s services since he came to Albion Way:

“The same problems have existed the whole time I’ve been here. I don’t think it’s got any more acute particularly in the last few months for instance, what with the riots. It was an unsettling time, but it didn’t affect the bread and butter of my work. There were still homeless people coming, there were still people coming for food parcels.”

There are four Salvation Army centres in the whole borough of Lewisham; as far as Nigel is aware, none receive any local or central government funding:

“I’m not sure, if you asked the council, they would even know what we did.”

The Albion Way centre is able to fund its social outreach schemes thanks to its second hand shop next door. When Nigel inherited his post, the hall was running at a £12,000 per annum loss, relying heavily on subsidies from the Army’s central fund.

Setting up the charity shop in the previously unused lounge area was his idea:

2To be honest, we were in such a sorry state financially that we thought it was on the cards that this place would close completely. People used to regularly leave clothes and things on the doorstep. The old grey cells got going and I thought ‘there’s got to be something we can do here in order to resource ourselves’.”

It was a simple, but highly effective, brainwave.

“I am pleased to say that we’re financially viable again. We don’t take any central money at all. All that we raise goes into the work we do here. A lot of people say to me they just can’t afford the prices in the shops. So [the charity shop] fulfils those needs, but it also resources us.”

The bulk of the Lewisham Salvation Army’s outreach work is with the homeless. Each matter is assessed on a case by case basis. Nigel is eager to tell me the story of one young man they recently assisted.

He had come up from Margate, and was not eligible to be re-housed by the local authority:

“He slept at the back of the registrar office for a week. By chance he then got wind of a job doing what he specialised in; fitting roller shutters.”

Without any formal clothes for an interview, the young man despaired of his chances. The Lewisham corps bought him a Primark suit and paid for him to attend the interview in West London. He got the job.

Nigel can’t hide his delight:

“That worked out beautifully. He’s living in a flat, he’s got a job. He’s gone from street homeless in Lewisham to working in Ealing and I’m pleased to say we were able to be part of the process.”

Nonetheless, Byrne is aware of the Salvation Army’s limitations when it comes to assisting those sleeping rough.

“If someone has just come into the area and hasn’t been made homeless within the borough, the council won’t have anything to do with re-housing them. If you add to that being over 21, male and single, you then are – if you want to view it in terms of the points system – very low priority. It’s made things a lot more complicated because in the old days you’d just pick up the phone and say: do you have a place?

You would get them up there one way or another, and you’d know that they’ll be okay. It does frustrate me slightly that I can’t do that.”

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Robin Hewings is the tobacco control manager at Cancer Research UK

“It makes me feel quite cool… It makes you feel stylish and that, kind of upper class.”

“It looks as if you’re like more mature. Better and more popular.”

Teenagers often talk like this about a new T-shirt or trainers. But they are also what young people say about cigarette brands in a new report (pdf) released this week by Cancer Research UK.

For teenagers, cigarette packs can be about more than nice colours but something far more important. It’s about the image they want to show the world. Cool. Mature. Popular.

It is one of the reasons 157,000 11- to 15-year-olds start smoking every year. Enough to fill 5,200 classrooms.

And it’s a reason we can do something about it. Later this year Australia will put all tobacco in plain packs, which all look the same in a standardised colour, font, size and shape with big picture warnings. All four UK nations have just begun a consultation for our country to have the same policy.

This matters to Cancer Research UK because a quarter of deaths from cancer are caused by tobacco.

So alongside our scientific breakthroughs to find new treatments for cancer, we look for ways to stop people getting cancer in the first place. And one of the best ways to do that is to stop kids from starting smoking.

As a country, we have achieved a lot. Cigarettes are no longer advertised on TV or on billboards or Formula One cars. Half as many children aged 11-15 start smoking as they did only 15 years ago. The tobacco industry opposed all the policies that made a difference. They blew a gasket when plain packs were suggested in Australia and spent millions on adverts and front groups to make their case.

We can expect much more of this in the next few months.

• How plain packaging on cigarettes will work 16 Apr 2012

• Is Big Tobacco blowing smoke in Cameron’s eyes? 10 Jun 2011

• Government is right to take action on tobacco packaging 9 Mar 2011

Experts in how to cut smoking and health groups support the policy because it makes cigarettes less attractive. The tobacco industry hates it because it makes their products less attractive.

It is the development they fear most.

Along with others, Cancer Research UK is trying to make sure the tobacco industry’s fears are realised with our campaign “The Answer Is Plain”. We want British teens to have the same protection from tobacco marketing as in Australia. That really would be cool.

View this shocking video footage of 6- to 11-year-olds talking about cigarette packets:

• For more information go to www.theanswerisplain.org.

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Kevin Gulliver is the director of Birmingham-based research charity the Human City Institute and chair of the Centre for Community Research but writes in a personal capacity; his interests are social and economic policy, especially relating to housing, health, communities and inequalities

This week’s revelation London councils are shipping out housing benefit claimants to the English regions to meet their housing needs and the news yesterday that the UK is officially back in recession are surprisingly closely linked.

The inability of the coalition government to cater for the nation’s housing requirements through sufficient supply of affordable housing – the last two years have seen the lowest number of housing completions since the end of World War Two – is reflected in the 3 per cent fall in construction sector output over the first quarter of the year.

This construction slump is the primary reason for the 0.2 per cent contraction in the economy overall.

Since there is a lack of social housing for waiting list applicants, Labour Newham and Tory-led Hillingdon, Croydon and Westminster admitted contacting social landlords, mainly in the Midlands, to move applicants out of the capital since they cannot afford to refer them to private landlords because of rapidly rising rents and biting benefit caps introduced by the government.

Many are calling this a social cleansing of London’s poor from more expensive areas.

Shelter research reveals the depth of London’s housing crisis with private sector rents rising at double the rate of the average London wage. At the same time there are 370,000 households on the housing waiting lists of London boroughs: 1 in 9 of the population.

• Tackling homelessness in London 8 Apr 2012

• ‘Back of a fag packet’ housing policy continues 30 Oct 2011

• London’s affordable housing crisis: The stats that will shock 30 Mar 2012

• Time to make the housing recovery a political priority 22 Mar 2012

• Cameron’s economically irrational Right to Buy relaunch won’t solve housing crisis 4 Apr 2012

In Newham, which sought to move 500 families to Stoke-on-Trent, 1 in 3 households are waiting list applicants.

Yet the answer cannot be to move sometimes desperate and needy people from their communities to other parts of the country which have their own housing crises.

The region where the Human City Institute operates – the West Midlands – has 184,000 on housing waiting lists and has seen the largest growth in homeless – at 14 per cent – of any English region over the last 12 months. But this is where Newham sought to relocate its 500 needy families.

Even so, the blame should be laid solely at the door of the government whose short-sighted housing and welfare policies have deepened an already grim outlook for those seeking affordable housing.

A more economically rational and ethical solution to the housing crisis and to move the UK out of recession would be to engineer a construction boom using public borrowing to provide social and affordable housing. This would help meet growing demand, create a long-term national asset on the national accounts, boost GDP and provide much-needed work for redundant construction workers.

For those sceptical of pushing up public borrowing, consider what Osborne’s £10 billion loan to the IMF could buy in housing and economic terms: 150,000 new homes, 300,000 construction jobs and stimulation of the supply chain.

Such an investment, taking into account multiplier effects, could add at least 1 per cent to economic growth over the next two years. It would also represent a return to bricks-and-mortar investment rather than lining the pockets of private landlords for extortionate rents.

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With the government talking up the possibility of extra powers as an enticement for cities to vote “yes” on May 3rd, speculation abounds over the potential extension of the remit of city governance. This includes control over rail and bus services, skills, apprenticeships, money to invest in high speed broadband and other economic infrastructure.

The referendums next month across England originate from the Localism Act and include Newcastle upon Tyne in the north east.

There are currently two other directly elected mayors in the region and 13 other cities including Bedford, Hartlepool, Leicester, London, Middlesbrough and Watford.

Proponents point to Leicester as an example of where extra powers have been gained from having a directly elected mayor, for example over transport,

Heavyweight fans of an elected mayor for Newcastle include David Miliband. Speaking at the North East Economic Forum (NEEF) last month, the former foreign secretary backed directly elected mayors, calling them “a more visible form of leadership in cities”.

Having run an all-postal ballot pilot scheme for the local elections in May 2003, Newcastle has a heritage now of a high level of postal votes proportionally of the 202,751 total electorate.

• Elected mayors offer “greater visibility, accountability and coordinative leadership” 16 Apr 2012

• Support grows for mayors as Londoners hail “better city” from experience 11 Apr 2012

• Vote 2012: An introduction to the various elections on May 3rd 17 Mar 2012

• Elected Mayors: Let the referendum campaigns begin 26 Jan 2012

• A call for progressives to back directly-elected mayors 5 Aug 2011

With ballot papers having started to arrive in people’s homes, the 63,636 postal voters in Newcastle already have the chance to vote on whether to follow suit, this is very much a live election.

Speaking to Left Foot Forward yesterday, former Cabinet minister Lord Adonis had this to say on the current state of play:

“The referendum in Newcastle is wide open. From my visits to the city I can say that there is clearly strong support for an elected mayor, including among political and business leaders.

“An elected mayor would enhance democracy and put the city on the map nationally and internationally in a far bigger way than now. Those are compelling arguments for change when more jobs and growth and better public services are imperative for the future.”

Having undertaken an investigative mayoral tour of Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield while director of the Institute for Government (see pdf), Adonis says:

“In a well-functioning mayoral authority the mayor is a strong influencer who has proactively fostered relationships across their council and locality.

“The mayor then uses his [or her] influence to pro-actively draw together and co-ordinate the various institutions of mayoral governance.”

At last week’s launch of the Warwick Commission report (pdf) on Elected Mayors and City Leadership, commissioners warned against any attempts to provide a ‘one-size-fits-all solution’.

Warwick’s research team interviewed 42 mayors, staff and senior council figures in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US in what is believed to be the widest ranging international comparative research exercise, in relatively similar political systems in the ‘Anglosphere’.

Research director Professor Keith Grint points to an elected mayor having a direct mandate and the stability of a four-year term as big merits, telling Left Foot Forward:

“Directly elected mayors offer the possibility of greater visibility, accountability and co-ordinative leadership as well as re-enchanting the body politic.”

However, adds Grint:

“In some cities an elected mayor may not be necessary because they have already constructed a significant identity and are vigorously and strategically led.”

One Newcastle Labour Party member, Dr Thom Brooks of Newcastle University, told Left Foot Forward:

“I’m originally from the United States where elected mayors are the norm. Of course, there are many examples of elected mayors that have been problematic. However, on the whole, they have become as essential to democratic life as any other political institution.

“They allow the public to have a voice on matters of particular local concern. I’ve long been surprised by their absence in the UK and I’m hoping for a big vote in favour this May.”

Dr Brooks adds:

“An elected mayor would bring greater political accountability at the local level.”

Unison is not so keen. In the last week, the public sector union has written to their estimated 10,000 members in Newcastle urging a “no” vote. One of the main issues facing Newcastle concern the massive coalition cuts to the public sector, a major part of the local economy.

Unison say:

“We believe that an elected mayor would place too much power in the hands of one person, diminishing the accountability of our existing elected councillors.

“If the city chooses to elect a mayor the cost to the city would be significant, which would ultimately have a negative impact on jobs and services in our city and on UNISON members.”

Brian Moore, chairman of the Yes Campaign locally, combats this with a geographical political point:

“Newcastle has been squeezed by Alex Salmond in Scotland and Boris Johnson in London. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to sit at the same table as the Scots and the Cockneys.”

In addition to Newcastle, mayoral referendums will take place next Thursday in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield. Liverpool and Salford have already chosen to have an elected Mayor, elections for which take place in May.

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In 2010 David Cameron reaffirmed his commitment to measuring levels of happiness. “There’s more to life than money,” he argued. The pledge was first made in opposition, during the times of plenty.

Ostensibly, the implementation now of happiness measures seems foolish; given the stream of statistical bad news on the economy, it would be implausible for the government to claim any kind of policy success based on happiness statistics alone.

And yet the commitment survives. The Office for National Statistics included four questions on ‘ subjective wellbeing’ in the Annual Population Survey for the first time in April 2011.

Is the government making a rod for its own back? If happiness goes up they won’t be able to claim the credit, and if happiness goes down their performance on the economy - the very thing Cameron wants us to stop obsessing over - will get the blame.

Alas, there are a few more sides to this story: Cameron’s support for measuring happiness, alongside GDP, derives instead from his profound commitment to conservative ideology.

As such, this is the sound of the Conservative Party moving away, albeit very tentatively - and perhaps without the full backing of George Osborne - from neoliberalism. The economic downturn has not altered but reinforced Cameron’s point of view on this.

As New Labour’s ‘accommodation’ to neoliberalism and the Thatcher legacy became stronger rather than weaker - contrary to expectations - Cameron carved a space for himself in promoting traditional English values in contrast to Labour’s fanatical modernisation.

Measuring happiness became, for Cameron and his one-time guru Steve Hilton, a peculiarly contemporary aspect on this agenda. And this helps to explain why in 2010 the UK electorate, despite the instinct to look leftwards that tends to kick in following financial crises in capitalist societies, looked instead to the right.

• Cameron’s attack on philanthropists is the latest nail in the Big Society coffin 11 Apr 2012

• “You’ve never had it so good” has never been so wrong: Review of The Cost of Inequality 19 Feb 2012

• TaxPayers’ Alliance make a mockery of themselves by denying wellbeing evidence 28 Jul 2011

It would be easy, and not unjustifiable, for the left to be cynical about what the government is doing.

But the left’s bêtes noires of recent decades, the neoliberals, are also cynical, and in some cases incensed. Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod of the Institute of Economic Affairs concede GDP growth does not itself increase levels of happiness; still, they argue, neither do other aggregate measures such as inequality, the level of public expenditure, and various health indicators.

And take another look at the speech on happiness Cameron gave in November 2010. He contrasts the pursuit of happiness in public policy with three shining examples of a neoliberal agenda in action: immigration, cheap booze, and consumerism.

The prime minister is therefore making the left’s job particularly difficult. But there is a major flaw in the government’s thinking. In terms of measuring social progress, the effectiveness of happiness measures are undermined by the fact that, as Johns and Ormerod point out, people always say seven.

The ONS asked people “how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?’; ‘to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”; and “how happy did you feel yesterday?”; across all three questions, three-quarters of people said seven out of ten. (When the question was posed in more negative terms, that is “how anxious did you feel yesterday?”, the vast majority said three out of ten.)

Differences based on gender, region and even class were negligible. The results for age are slightly different, given that happiness levels across the age distribution tend to be U-shaped (albeit less so in the UK compared to other similar countries, because our children tend to be relatively unhappy) - yet this seems to be a normal and perpetual aspect of the life-cycle, and not alterable through public policy.

In this context, seven becomes a mediocre and almost meaningless result. People in a wide range of circumstances say seven because what they expect from life has been shaped by their experiences up to that point. Most people cope, adapt, and look on the bright side of things. Some people don’t.

But here, in Shakespearean terms, is the rub: conservative ideologues like Cameron are perfectly content with this. Society can muddle through, seven-tenths happy, with progressive ideals and large-scale public policy interventions rendered futile.

An alternative approach to measuring happiness has been developed through the New Economic Foundation’s national accounts of wellbeing. This is based not simply on self-reported levels of happiness and anxiety; instead, the components of a happy, secure and worthwhile life are split up and assessed independently, with both subjective and objective measures. There is no single key to happiness but rather a jigsaw to be pieced together carefully.

If happiness became the central goal of public policy, it would offer the state a licence to intervene in our daily lives on a massive scale and, above all, as the NEF’s national comparisons make abundantly clear, a mandate to eradicate poverty.

Labour doesn’t really know how to respond. Just as with the Hilton-esque ‘nudge’ and ‘big society’ ideas, the party toyed with the happiness agenda in government, without any real conviction, when it co-opted Richard Layard, editor of the World Happiness Report published earlier this month, as ‘happiness tsar’.

Andy Burnham recently criticised the measurement of happiness by government, arguing instead that the government should be targeting ‘resilience’. But as psychologist David Harper shows, resilience is already part of Cameron’s thinking on this issue (if not the ONS analysis).

More importantly, Harper argues that ‘plans aimed at increasing individual resilience may have the unintended side-effects of increasing the self-blame of those who struggle in adversity, and supporting social policies experienced by some poor people as victim blaming’.

Clearly, the left should not be pursuing resilience at the expense of preventing the need for resilience. It should not be pursuing happiness unless levels of happiness become a demonstrable measure of social progress, which is unlikely.

Yet it cannot continue to pursue growth for its own sake. It’s hard to shake the feeling that Cameron has played a blinder on this one, even if he cannot be too exuberant about this in the short-term. Labour needs to change the terms of the debate.

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By Cllr. Zaffar van Kalwala (Labour, Stonebridge Ward, London Borough of Brent)

Recently, 14 members of the ‘Thugs of Stonebridge’ gang were arrested in my ward as part of Operation Serpentine, the Metropolitan Police’s anti-gang initiative.
The arrests were a timely reminder that even after £250m of regeneration investment from the last Labour government, the dark shadows of guns and gangs still hang over the notorious Stonebridge estate, formerly an address to which you couldn’t get a pizza delivered.

From SE10 to NW10, young people in gangs commit 22% of all serious violence in the capital. Today, we’re witnessing a worrying process of ‘Americanisation’, with gangs using colour-coded clothes, a la Los Angeles’ Bloods and Crips gangs, as trainers hung from telephone lines mark out their territories.

Yet most shocking of all is the propensity of some young people to use extreme violence and aggression, and then to flaunt it with pride on social media networks.

This careless violence and terror blights our streets everyday. Only 17% of young people feel safe in London. What is now needed is not just a radical, innovative approach to tackling gangs, but something more in sync with the lure of this corrosive new street culture.

This is why I’m supporting Stella Creasy MP’s Mayoral Youth Crime Pledge, which calls for the next Mayor of London to tackle youth crime. It empowers young people by creating young leaders and putting youth crime firmly on the next Mayor’s agenda. It gives a voice to London’s youth who, we sometimes forget, are also victims of crime.

• Responding to the riots: We need more than fuzzy buzz words from the government 1 Apr 2012

• IDS jumped the gun: Gangs had nothing to do with the riots 10 Nov 2011

• MPs give voice to the ‘real human tragedies’ behind today’s unemployment stats 12 Oct 2011

• How to build a cross-party consenus on responding to the riots 16 Aug 2011

• Grayling’s revisionism on Wire comparisons 6 Oct 2009

Last year, 7,500 young people were victims of knife crime. Moreover, all the evidence tells us that once a young person is a victim of crime, they are more likely to carry a knife themselves.

I recently hosted Labour MP Stella Creasy at our local youth radio station in Brent, where she spoke to young people about their experiences of gangs and the challenges of growing up in one of the most deprived areas in the country.

They told their stories with passion and purpose. We heard how some young people couldn’t go to other postcodes because they were from another part of the borough, even if it was only a few hundred meters away.

They spoke about having a virtual family where they hardly saw their parents, because they were working numerous jobs to make ends meet. In this situation, the gangs, by providing these young people both with the latest Nike trainers and a sense of love and belonging, become surrogate families.

We heard, too, about young girls who are drawn into gangs and subjected, along with the usual iniquities of gang culture and criminality, to sexual exploitation and abuse. The need for gang members to be the ‘big man’, to not back down whatever the odds, has become immortalised by ‘grime’, the tough urban music genre which fuses hip-hop, garage and drum and bass.

Government cuts, youth unemployment, tensions with the police and the erosion of community spirit only add to the complexities of the problems we face.

Our solution to gang culture needs to move away from a one-dimensional approach, which focuses solely on increasing resources. Although this is important, increased investment in youth services will achieve nothing without paying attention to other factors such as housing, education, family support raising aspirations and tackling social deprivation.

Above all, local stakeholders need to develop a coherent, coordinated gangs strategy. Isolated strands of public policy, and fragmented interventions by various public departments and organisations, must be eradicated. We need a more inclusive approach, which brings together local partners to develop youth-led initiatives. Local models can respond to local dynamics, and can be specific to the communities in which gangs operate.

We are now at a tipping point. Do we just accept gangs and gang culture, or do we, as a community, say that this is something we will not tolerate?

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Jill Rutter is an associate fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), and one of the authors of “Social Housing Allocation and Immigrant Communities” (EHRC, 2009); she writes here in a personal capacity

There is no doubt that there are real public concerns about the scale and impact of international migration into the UK.

Among the most controversial and misunderstood of these concerns are the supposed impacts of migration on social housing availability.

At a time when five million people are on social housing waiting lists in the UK, and social housing new builds have shrunk to almost nothing, such concerns are not surprising.

The debate over social housing allocation and immigration garnered further attention this week with the publication, by Migration Watch, of a paper on the subject, and associated media coverage by Frank Field. As might be expected from this pressure group, the paper argues that immigration is placing great pressure on social housing in London.

At the same time, the Metropolitan Migration Foundation published polling data suggesting that 66% of people consider birthplace to be irrelevant when allocating social housing. In other words, most people want fairness. But what is the way forward in this most heated of issues?

Even by Migration Watch’s standards, their paper on social housing was a badly researched attempt to raise tensions. It concluded that 11 per cent of social housing lets in London go to foreign nationals: in a city where 37 per cent of the population is foreign-born, what can you expect?

London’s affordable housing crisis: the stats that will shock 30 Mar 2012

• Time to make the housing recovery a political priority 22 Mar 2012

• Building social housing would cut the housing benefit bill three times faster than a cap 20 Feb 2012

• Downsizing the housing strategy 21 Jany 2012

• Could the welfare bill signal the death of social housing? 22 Dec 2011

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Their paper was an attempted riposte to research by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, published in 2009, showing that migrants are overwhelmingly housed in the private rental sector, both in London and elsewhere. The research showed that of the migrants to have arrived in Britain over the past five years, only 11% had been allocated social housing – a group that largely comprised refugees granted sanctuary in the UK.

The reality is that many new migrants simply do not qualify for social housing. Those who come to the UK through work visa or student routes are barred from social housing by their immigration status.

The UK sponsor of a spouse or partner has to show that they can house that person, under no recourse to public funds rules, before the overseas spouse is admitted to the UK. Migrants from the European Economic Area have to show a local connection and prove that they have not made themselves homeless by moving to the UK.

Still, arguments about statistics and entitlements are not going to defuse tensions about the impact of immigration on social housing allocations. There are very real perceptions that UK citizens are not treated fairly when it comes to social housing – perceptions that progressives need to address.

In an attempt to address questions about fairness, the last Labour government produced new social housing allocation guidance in 2009 that enabled local authorities to pace greater weight on local connections and waiting time.

This guidance led to minor changes to local authorities’ letting procedures - social housing applicants were, in some cases, awarded a few more points for a local connection. (This had some unintended consequences, since awarding points for a local connection can discriminate against people who want to move to find work.) Yet these changes offered the public little reassurance.

In turn, the coalition government used the Localism Act 2011 to make substantial changes to social housing allocation. The Act allows local authorities to grant time-limited social tenancies, as well as discharge their duties to provide social housing by supplying privately rented accommodation. In future, social housing will no longer represent housing security, but a patchwork of tenancies – a condition that can only inflame resentments and misconceptions.

At the same time, social housing new builds have shrunk to almost nothing. Between April 2010 and March 2011, Homes and Communities Agency statistics show that there were 10,965 social housing starts on site in London. In the six months to 30 September 2011, this figure had shrunk to 56 new social housing starts on site in London. This is a truly shameful statistic.

We need a different approach. We need much greater local transparency in the allocation of social housing. There could be much more involvement of local people in drawing up social housing allocation policies. We need to afford local authority housing officers the time to talk to those on waiting lists about the processes, and why there is a long wait for social housing.

Local politicians need also to listen to concerns about housing, while addressing misconceptions. Talking about migration helps: a study from the Institute for Public Policy Research looked at examples of how tensions about housing had been successfully defused by sensitive but pro-active local leadership. But above all, we need to build more social housing.

 

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As the prospect of seeing a generation of new directly-elected mayors in our major cities comes into focus ahead of referendums in our 10 largest cities on May 3rd, an influential new report says mayors can offer “greater visibility, accountability and co-ordinative leadership as well as re-enchanting the body politic”.

The Warwick Commission into Elected Mayors and City Leadership, formally launched today, sets itself the task of answering “What is the role of elected mayors in providing strategic leadership to cities?”

Led by Professors Wyn Grant and Keith Grint from Warwick University, the 42-page interim report says that elected mayors:

“May provide a viable alternative for invigorating some locales, especially at a time when the forces of globalisation are setting city against city across the globe in their competition for capital, labour and knowledge.”

Cautious of making a recommendation about whether there should be big city mayors or not ahead of the local referendums, the report nevertheless argues:

“Directly elected mayors offer the possibility of greater visibility, accountability and co-
ordinative leadership as well as re-enchanting the body politic, and much of this derives from their relative independence from party discipline through their direct mandate and through their four year term.”

Claiming that local government has “progressed incrementally with little strategic direction” over the years, the report argues that central government usually only gets involved to “address the byzantine local structures and processes that have embodied the consequences of this reactive incrementalism”. In terms of judging their performance, it calls for a “mature debate about the indicators of success by which we can evaluate the performance of mayors”.

• Support grows for mayors as Londoners hail “better city” from experience 11 Apr 2012

• Will Birmingham say ‘alrite’ to an elected Mayor? 29 Mar 2012

• Will Bristol cross the bridge to an elected Mayor? 15 Mar 2012

• Elected Mayors: Let the referendum campaigns begin 26 Jan 2012

• Directly elected mayors with increased powers will reinvigorate local governance 25 Jan 2012

The report goes on:

“Unless mayors are unlike every other kind of organisational leader then it will prove very difficult to establish a series of objective metrics to hold them to account: there are usually just too many variables involved to apportion responsibility accurately - including the difficulty of assessing what time period we should judge to be useful.”

The government’s new Localism Act compells Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Wakefield, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham, Coventry and Bristol to each hold a local referendum on 3 May about whether to switch to an elected mayor, replacing the existing council leader model. In addition, Salford and Liverpool are pressing ahead with creating elected mayors of their own volition, using different legislation.

Meanwhile, in Doncaster, there is a referendum on whether to keep the mayoral model, which the town adopted in 2002. A recent BBC poll showed 59 per cent of residents favoured retaining their mayor, while 85 per cent of businesses in a local Chamber of Commerce poll did.