“Ok let’s talk about food” was the surprise opening gambit from Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, who together with former Audit Commission director David Walker was appearing, aptly enough, at the Thursday lunchtime Festival of Literature slot at Swindon Arts Centre. Talking about their recent co-authored book “Dismembered” which looks at the long-term decline of the public realm, this neat device was used to highlight one example of how cuts in the public health inspectorate is leading to less frequent revisits of food establishments that have failed previous health and safety inspections.
With that unsettling thought now safely planted in our minds we were then quickly asked to consider the impact of the cuts to the growing threat of air pollution to public health with cutbacks meaning some monitoring stations are now being checked less frequently. These and many other impacts that have been more apparent in recent public discourse such as reduced public library services, Sure Start centre closures, the social care crisis and police cuts were all cited as evidence that the public realm is very much under threat to the detriment of us all with negative impacts on individuals and society as a whole.
The authors contention is that this attack on the public realm, though presented as a necessary budgetary corrective to the financial crash of 2008 is actually an ideological crusade designed to shrink the state in the UK to levels more akin to those in the USA, leaving the UK an outlier in Europe with levels of public expenditure set to be drastically reduced to around 35% of GDP compared to levels of around 43% in Germany.
As was suggested in the Q&A that followed the talk too often the value of public services is not fully appreciated or considered with groups like the taxpayers alliance often successful in focussing discussions primarily on cost. Walker and Toynbee argue that often opening up public services to notional ideas of private sector competition and choice turn out to be a fallacy with little evidence to support the idea that services are improved as a result. Following on from that discussion both authors suggested that taxation as the price for a civilised society is an argument that too few politicians seem prepared to make. It was at times a slightly dispiriting talk as solutions to this huge problem were not clearly evident to either audience or authors with a more atomised society, each of us in our silos, with less and less sense of our real interdependencies. There was a suggestion that things may have to get worse before they will get better, before enough people demand more a revitalised public realm, which though perhaps true is not a hugely cheering thought.
The two authors clearly work well together having collaborated on two books in recent years and this mutual professional cooperation and respect is evident as they take turns to talk through some of the main themes of their book, though each presenting slightly different perspectives – Walker for instance warning us against Daily Mail diatribes against the state whilst Toynbee is at pains to warn against the dangers of retreating into our own echo chambers. This willingness to work together, but to challenge and be challenged was perhaps the lesson some of us may take away from this talk, for those of us who believe it passionately to be prepared to talk about and stand up for the good that public sector services can and do provide.
reviewed by Steve Cox
