A View from the Foothills Quotes

“This is a classic New Labour document, being printed on glossy paper and illustrated with colour pictures of the Elysium that is the new Britain. Happy people, many from ethnic minorities, gaze productively at computer screens. Pensioners get off a gleaming, streamlined tram which has just delivered them promptly and inexpensively to their grandchildren … The prose has the same unreal quality. Nothing actually happens. Nothing tangible is planned. But we are promised there will be ‘innovative developments’, ‘local strategic partnerships’ and ‘urban policy units’. Town councils will have new powers to ‘promote well-being’ … and, just in case we think this will never happen, we are promised that ‘visions for the future will be developed’. There will be a ‘key focus’ here and a ‘co-ordinated effort’ there. The government in its wisdom has ‘established a framework’. The whole thing resembles those fantastical architect’s drawings in which slim, well-dressed figures stroll across tree-festooned piazzas with no mention of empty burger boxes or gangs of glowering youths.”
― Chris Mullin, A View from the Foothills: The Diaries of Chris Mullin