Slums, Dogs, Billionaires

Danny Boyle was interviewed last night on the Culture Show by Mark Kermode. Ostensibly this was about his new film Trance, although it was more a profile of a life less ordinary. Not only is he a prolific film-maker and national treasure but artistic director of the Olympic spectacular opening ceremony. The programme prompted lots of thoughts. Why is someone so grounded in northern reality able to make the harsh realities of ordinary lives into fantasies? And why are the coalition government equally adept at translating their policy fantasies into harsh realities for ordinary folk?

The answer was probably hinted at when Boyle, brought up a catholic and at one time destined for the priesthood, described himself as "a very flexible, malleable atheist not an agnostic". Someone whose spirituality and faith are authentic but doused in the school of life. Someone who is genuinely interested in people and their circumstances and wants to convey them so that society understands the power and frailty of the human condition. Speaking about the Olympic opening ceremony, he attributed its success to the volunteers from the NHS and elsewhere. He explained that when asked to direct it in June 2010,  a lot of people were certain that it would be a disaster. But he thought he was qualified, he lived in the area, probably had enough authority to force through his ideas and most of all trusted the cast of volunteers. It was mutually inspiring and he realised that "it might not be shite."

The programme followed several news items over the past couple of days that could be seen as the coalition's attempt to reprise Slumdog Millionaire with their own twist of fate. We had Ian Duncan Smith telling the poor, the downtrodden and the disabled that they would lose their benefits if they under-occupied houses. An extra bedroom, often required for storage in the tiny properties and future slums that are currently being built in many of our towns and cities, is deemed justification to warrant a move to a property with fewer rooms for those in rented accommodation. Yet it is an inescapable fact that the greatest level of under-occupancy, measured by either rooms or square metres, is by our wealthy retired, single-person and two-person households as well as second homeowners.

Compare the average household size in Kensington and Chelsea (2.02 persons per house) where houses are well endowed with space and rooms and the population is declining with rapidly growing Newham, the location of the Olympic village. It has not only the highest level of poverty but the highest average household size 3.01 persons per house. Needless to say, houses here have fewer rooms and are smaller. Yet Council Tax payments for band H properties, large detached houses or apartments, often five or six times as large and gurgling with water-based devices are only twice that of a shoebox-sized, one-bathroom and two-bedroom rented house occupied by Duncan Smith's victims. The unfairness is palpable and exacerbated by the tax evasion tendencies of many of the wealthy occupants of the larger properties.  And to make matters worse the new planning legislation introduced by Eric Pickles has been doctored to allow more new private houses to be built on greenfield sites. This will make it less likely that run-down inner city housing will be redeveloped with a proportion of social housing. Rhe outcome will be a further increase in overcrowding and confining more people to live in the coalition's slums.

Next, we heard of the tragic death of a young girl in Lancashire, only 10 miles from Boyle's home town of Radcliffe. She was savaged by five dogs including a couple of Staffordshire Bull Terriers. The government had failed to take any action on proposals to change the law surrounding dangerous dogs which were put forward by the select committee following several similar incidents in recent years. The select committee recommended extending the law to include dogs on private property and the introduction of dog control notices, which are used in Scotland. A dangerous dog tax would make far more sense than the bedroom tax.

Early in the week, one of the many of UK's wealthy billionaire Russian citizens was found dead, following several unsuccessful assassination attempts. London has now more billionaires than any city in the world and Boris Berezovsky was one of those who had been found guilty of fraud and embezzlement in Russia (as well as supporting Boris Yeltsin) so he bought his way into the UK in a way that the asylum seekers could never achieve. An interesting twist on the way that scroungers and strivers are often classified the wrong way around. But then the coalition has never deviated from its underlying principle of allowing power and money to hold sway in the lottery of life.

All of these events occurred after we were told that the government had agreed to spend £150m on adapting the Olympic stadium to accommodate West Ham United, who will have to find £15m, or half the price of Andy Carroll.  The legacy of the Olympics is that Britain's 68th richest man, worth £500m acquired from owning half the porn industry in Britain and convicted of living off immoral earnings, gets £150m of government funding. Meanwhile funding for sports across the country has been drastically cut, so that clubs are struggling to meet the interest of youngsters inspired by the Olympics. Stadiums such as the athletic track in Sheffield are closing. The government truly live in a trance.

This week's stories alone should make us think about someone like Danny becoming champion of the world, or at least PM; it might just stop the government's decisions being shite.