Each New Deal for Communities NDC initives has it’s own set of dynamics and a certain culture that is unique to that area, but in most cases the level of subjugation that is being perpetrated by the regeneration administrators, the City Council and the many different Registered Social Landlord (RSL’s) onto the residents of each regeneration area is the same. There is a definite oppressive methodology that is set into motion whenever a poor community is earmarked for regeneration. The problems in Braunstone are manifest to some degree or other in every NDC and SRB initiative throughout the UK.

The Liverpool Kensington NDC initiative covers an area of Liverpool that is close to the city centre and the main motorway the M62, also known as the gateway into Liverpool, runs directly through the middle of the Kensington NDC area. So as you can see the NDC funding was not given because of the deprivation factors or the poverty that exists within this inner city area, it was given because of the areas strategic position close to the city centre. At this present moment £5 billion, money that was supposed to go to another 37 poor run down areas across the whole region of Merseyside, was stolen by city centre elitists and diverted into the city centre where it will be used to build statues, hotels and office blocks. The roadways leading from the M62 exist are totally inadequate and every evening Edge Lane, the main road that runs through the Kensington NDC area, is jammed with traffic. This is why the Kensington NDC area is in the process of having over 1,500 homes and small businesses demolished, some of these homes will have to be demolished so that Edge Lane can be widened. Nobody really knows, except for the city centre elitists, if Edge Lane will be the main route from the M62 into the city centre or whether the route will be diverted from Edge Lane in another direction, but even if this happens Edge Lane will still have to be widened as a second exit road.

It’s truly amazing to observe the behaviour of the people who live in the Kensington NDC area, especially the ones who are involved in the NDC initiative. These, often well meaning people, are totally ignorant to what is happening and what is being stealthfully perpetrated against them by the regeneration administrators and all the other different service providers that surround them. The residents are willing participants in their own subjugation. They seem quite incapable of coming to terms with the concrete reality that they are being oppressed and that most of them will be thrown out of the area when their homes are demolished. Already there is inter area rivalry and hatred amongst residents, residents who had been friends for years now hate each other, divisions are now starting to become quite visible amongst long term residents.

The Kensington NDC area has many small and medium size businesses within its boundary, there are even a couple of big businesses such as GEC and Plesseys. The very small businesses such as shop keepers, small back street garages and such like are going to get a raw deal when the medium size businesses, businesses that employ between 10 to 20 people, are going to get a good deal. For instance yesterday I was talking to a businessman that owns a large wholesalers in the area and showing him a document that a concerned resident passed onto me. An insertion on the document indicted that his business premises where going to be relocated because the Kensington Regeneration administrators needed the land his business was on. He told me that he did not know he was going to be relocated and made out that it was new to him. I later found out from one of his friends that he had had discussions months previous about the possibility of his business being relocated to another premises, probably brand new and in the same area. It’s now quite normal for businessmen to be very guarded about what they say; the “nod nod wink wink say no more” analogy is quite a normal occurrence amongst certain businessmen who stand to benefit from the NDC programme. There are other medium size businesses similar to him and they are being very secretive about what deals have been offered to them. Of course the sky’s the limit for the big businesses and the conniving RSL’s who are in reality, whatever they may claim to the contrary, private landlords, they will be offered the biggest slice of the NDC funding. All this unfairness is secretly going on behind the backs of the very people that the money was really intended to help, that is the socially excluded. But this is the madness of regeneration and surely proves that central government rhetoric in no way corresponds with the reality on the ground.

It’s quite amazing to see the labyrinth of city councillor or elected members, council officers, regeneration administrators and RSL housing association officers scrabbling amongst themselves to get the lions share of the NDC funding. There are certain councillors who have set themselves up as consultants and council officers that flit from the council and into the RSL’s then back again to the council then they are consultants and so the madness goes on and on. The most extraordinary aspect of this perversity is the RSL’s are being run by the council officers with the help of certain councillors. In other words the RSL’s, which are now private sector landlords, are in effect owned and run by former council officers with the full go ahead of certain corrupt, councillors. Of course this corruption is what is known in their trade as legal corruption. Most of the councillors in Liverpool and Merseyside are career councillors and care nothing about their constituents. As Braunstone have witnessed our MP’s are also, mainly middle class careerist MP’s who know about the corruption but have decided, just like Government Office civil servants, to sit on the fence and do nothing.

Lets not forget the media. Over the last couple of days the media, especially the television evening news, has fallen over itself to try and portray an image of it’s “OK to demolish thousands of houses throughout the UK” and pay the unfortunate homeowners a pittance. Most of these houses where and still are owned by the corrupt RSL’s or housing associations. On Look North a couple of nights ago our council leader was trying to give the impression that it is normal to decimate whole communities by demolishing thousands of houses, never once did he say that these areas where once nice areas to live in before the evil housing associations bought thousands of houses and moved stooge tenants in and left hundreds empty in a deliberate attempt to bring the area down so that they along with the corrupt council officers who are backed by the idiot blind careerist councillors could use these areas to build new builds so as to yuppyise the area and throw the poor people out. A deliberate exercise put into motion by using the most surreptitious means. Then we have the Liverpool Echo, one of the most right wing local newspapers throughout the UK. Most of the journalists and the editor of this obnoxious newspaper are middle class right wing nerds who are ardent defenders of the present dreadful system that we are being forced to live under. Only a couple of weeks ago the political reporter of this illustrious newspaper admitted to me on the phone that she had got her fact wrong when she wrote a full front page and centre page article about the benefits of the Kensington NDC that bore no reality to truth. Of course the editor of the Echo would not rectify this incorrect reportage. As a result of this I had to distribute 4,000 “whistle Blower” news letters around the NDC community explaining to the people that the Echo journalist had got her fact wrong, as a result of the newsletter the Echo, and this is not the first time, have threatened to take legal action against me. Misinformation and secrecy is now a common factor amongst the press and the regeneration administrators. Because the press and the administrators work to the analogy that nothing must be said or done that can harm the long term exsistense of regeneration funding on Merseyside, better to have the money and make a mess of it than to have no money at all.

I have witnessed modes of behaviour amongst residents that defies explanation. The regeneration administrators and the new RSL Community Seven have brought unto themselves some of the most obnoxious, ignorant, easily manipulated people in the community through the use of 5 so called Citizens Panels and 5 Neighbourhood Housing Planning Groups. (At present there are just over a hundred people out of a population of 14,000 people attending these panels. The least attended are the Citizens Panels with about 60 to 70 people turning up amongst all five of them and their numbers will further decrease as time goes by). Of course the people who run these grossly underatended groups are mainly community cronies, some of them even have family members working for the Kensington Regeneration administrators. Most of these very same people are convinced that what they are agreeing to is the best way forward. Lets try to come to terms with the blind ignorance of these often well meaning people. Firstly it takes some self convincing to do what these people do, they must have some idea of the adverse effects that their decisions will eventually have on the wider community. Surely these are not evil people, but rather simple misinformed people who have convinced themselves through some form of autosuggestion that everything the regeneration administrators say is sacrosanct and cannot be faulted. As I have already mentioned on this web site the regeneration administrators hold these very same people up as the community when they in no why represent the thoughts and aspirations of the wider community.

Mike Lane