.
Art De Rivers : Reporting From Birmingham North
For years in Kingstanding and Erdington, two areas of Birmingham North UK people have been saying the sitting MP Sion Simon was not a particularly good M.P.
On February the 3rd he announced his intention to resign as an MP .
Birmingham MP to quit Commons in bid to be first mayor
Sion Simon MP said he was initially sceptical about the need for mayorsBirmingham Erdington MP Sion Simon is to step down from Parliament and as a minister to campaign to become the city's first elected mayor.
He will give up his seat at the next election to lobby for the city to adopt the elected mayor system.
Mr Simon, 41, told the BBC: "The answer to Birmingham's problems simply don't lie in London.
"I'm certainly committed to putting myself forward and becoming the Labour candidate."
So what's the local story :
The running local Erdington/Kingstanding joke was to call him : "The Invisible Man" .
And that was even before he got a Junior Minister's portfolio with the Dept Of Culture Media and Sport .
Some local people have said his responses back to constituents took months and they were not happy with that . Others were aware of his research and journalist background with the Telegraph and the fact that he wrote in the local Great Barr Observer every few weeks trotting out for local consumption ritualistic support of the Labour Party whose policies did little for areas of either Kingstanding or Erdington which together formed the "Erdington" constituency where he is the sitting M.P.
Kingstanding is peculiarly locked out of easy access for productive work for working age people most of whom are still the ex-working class. Now often an underclass or "workless class" they often express they feel like aliens in their own city of 50% immigration .
"There has been a failure to address people who : are already here" - they will often say .
There has been waves of immigration into Birmingham UK and the last was the E.U. Polish who came to the UK for work . Some worked in nearby Erdington Town Centre shops - some have returned to Poland since the Zloty and standard of living has has risen and the prospects of work look good there.
People in Kingstanding are more aware of how thin the economic ice is for the underclasses stuck in their own non-job arctics and economically immobile districts. There's no where to walk or work without drowning in no prospect pool.
Engineering factories in days gone past used to furnish most of the Erdington and Kingstanding jobs : I.M.I. Witton, and Forgings and Presswork in nearby Perry Barr , Tufnells , and other companies have gone .. There are shops in Perry Barr "One Stop Centre" and service sector workers for Govt , Local Govt and a few small unusually successful firms are left to pump the local economy and a lot of the rest of it is pumped by Gov't benefits..
Into this all too common half economic mirage of an economy with the weave of financial failures of the banking system and the UK comes the British National Party .. But why might they be successful in Kingstanding or Erdington ?
The answer is not hard to see and hear . The new white underclasses of 20 years or so have recognised they have no economic and social place or at least they "feel" it has been eroded. The Labour Party is the party of the middle classes .
The locals are not about to analyze capitalism either, and its mass movement of money and productive capacity to China and India . No.
What they will do is see they are sharing resources with others who they deem are incomers and have less claim on those resources . The local claims are that Somali's got houses and benefits by sending their kids into Birmingham UK from Holland where they already had places . This claim has circulated for years . The UK Children Act was used to gain a foothold - so locals say - and it resulted in Somali adults finally arriving. There are 14000 or so now in Birmingham. That is their story . They point to a story of a local white woman with kids who needed housing and who spent time living in a car locally .. That's the tale you hear .. Like it or not .
They point to the Birmingham Social Services using money meant for old people to service the needs of those who came in for asylum . "Kids first" they say "they used the kids .."
That is what they say .. These are old stories you can hear locally .
The failure to debate immigration into the UK openly, sensibly, and really vigorously is part of another bigger failure : namely the failure to debate and fix upon the major message of our times : Massive economic change and how to adapt .
Politicians sidled around these issues - with the implications all being covered over by borrowing and living off credit and false-money .. Money that disappeared because it had no basis in easily collateralised reality coupled with more immanent realizable cash value i.e. not at 10 or 20 gymnastic derivative document removes ..
Where does health lie ? It lies in engagement and breaking the silly moulds of spinning truth into webs of false promise . Give everyone the hard message especially those in the main middle sectors of society who have burgeoned over 20 years - 10 at least in the UK with no deep laden industrial productivity .
The UK has to compete with China and India and it has to do it without a huge aspiring unproductive "aspirational class" which grew under Labour but produced little but bureaucracy and "media"
In Kingstanding and Erdington there is a latent talent of working class craft and muscle ..Include it better, is the message .
Or the language of the British National Party will take over, because they see all the emotional disaffection and the way it expresses itself towards others .
They will use it and in B'ham North their leaflets are going out through the Kingstanding letterboxes - this is one obtained today .
Does Sion Simon stand a chance of becoming the Mayor of Birmingham as he shifts sideways into that promised land ? Ask the people in Kingstanding and Erdington ...
In December, Mr Simon was forced to apologise after it emerged he rented a second home from his sister, in contravention of Commons rules.
He promised to repay a sum, thought to run to about £20,000, saying it had been an oversight.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment