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Re: Respect.....!
Shh - he said the 's' word. Mr. Tony doesn't like communities acting unilaterally* and 'social' things in case someone starts waving red flags and reminding him of the Past (which he likes to redefine, starting with the gang violence of poverty stricken Glasgow during the Depression).
The key point about many things Blair has done is that power (mainly in the form of money, of course, without which nothing gets done) has been taken *away* from local communities and given either to Whitehall, increasingly direct to the Number Ten Policy Unit (prop. A. Blair) or to private companies, often offshore, privately owned by venture capitalists and totally unaccountable. Thus, even if you want to get involved, you'll find the levers of local democracy have been snapped off *deliberately* over the last 25 years of Thatcherite centralism (see ILEA, GLC, local government reforms, NHS Trusts, foundation hospitals, Academy Schools etc.). There's naff all about that in these half-baked, rehashed 'action points'.
The recent Education White Paper is also relevant here, since that continues the process of taking schools out of local authority control and giving them to an unholy alliance of businessmen and central government bureaucrats. Which is a bad idea, in case you hadn't guessed.
*While being bang alongside the idea of the USA acting unilaterally, of course.
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