HOUSING MARKET RENEWAL PATHFINDER

The Arts Council of England is so over-stretched that it seems to have come to the stage where it only regards someone as an artist if they write in and ask for money. To them an artist is someone they fund or someone attached to an organisation which they fund.

Sadly because of the nature of their workloads the officers don't know the local artists what they know is their bidding for money document number. This is because ACE is centralised and has recently sent out an ukase instructing that grants are processed at their central office in London.

Of course the serious arts go on without the arts officers. There is always an under-swell of artists who are known to the people and to the trade. They are regional artists. Ian McMillan of Darfield and Barnsley, was one until he made it big time, and Ray Hearne of Wath and Rotherham is another.

Tonight I received the following song from that stalwart of the left and the WEA Ray Hearne. It isn't his best to my way of thinking but then I am reading it cold. And not seeing it performed. This is poetry for the day. Some of his best work is beautiful, lyrical. This is a rant that echoes the tradition of his hero Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. It shows a political commitment and a wish to deflate the pomposity – and to come to my theme of the day – Gov Lang.

As stakeholders say in PC circles 'I would like to share this with you.'

FINDING PATHS WITH THE PATH FINDER

Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder x 4
Cranking up the rhythm like an organ-grinder
‘One skips in and another one behind her….’
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
Whoever named it played a blinder
But from such a mouthful what can we glean?
In down-to-Earth English, what does it mean?

I’ll tell yer if yer listen

It’s government parlance for more than a scheme
More than the vapours of a bureaucrat’s dream
And it’s more than the sum of the words as they stand
As easy as this to dismiss out of hand

Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
In case you’d forgotten, that’s a reminder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
(This is more like the monkey, than the organ-grinder!)

Well what kind of pathfinder? Where to? And who’ll
Reap the ultimate benefits of renewal?

I’ll tell yer if yer listen

It’s called a Pathfinder ‘cos it’s blazing a trail
Through substandard housing, on a major scale
Northwards and Southwards, upwards and down
The entire country, cities, towns,
Wherever community spirit’s been blighted
Environment rubbished and local views slighted
That par-for-the-course kind of status quo
We’d come to expect from History and Co.
Degeneration and degradation
The poor relation’s desperation
We remember all that, those of us not yet dead
‘There is no alternative’ that’s what they said
We remember the closures, the screws as they tightened
Around our lives, the un-enlightened
Attitudes of chancers and clones
With fat wallets and hearts like stones
Who bulldozed our cultures of coal and steel
Our rolling mills and winding wheels
Who pole-axed our giants to make us feel small
‘The pits must shut’ we remember it all
Who doesn’t remember, around this room?
Pride as it sank into doom and gloom?
Jobs that vanished at haemorrhage rate
Money that learned to evaporate

You could get on yer bike or strap on yer skates
But stuck in the middle of a run-down estate
In a maisonette up a cul-de-sac
Or a mid-Victorian back-to-back
All of a sudden the future looked bleak
The borough’s goose was cooked, so to speak
Ways of life in rapid decline
Aspiration withering on the vine
Through tyranny’s not unintelligent designs
And bloody princesses dolled up the nines
And apart from these curses embellished as rhymes
The buggers have never paid for their crimes

We remember that whole sad performance, and more
Closure on closure, other closures in store
Councils backed up against the wall
And nothing to spend on housing at all
Dilapidation mythologised
Entire communities demonised
In local lads’ and lasses dreams.
We wanted employment, they gave us schemes

The waters under our bridges burned
But the big mill of history rolled on and turned

And all of a sudden the language changed
Priorities got re-arranged
A government of a different hue
Picked up the nation’s IOU
And even though it seemed like an age
‘Neighbourhoods’ became the rage
Resources at last began to flow
From the highest levels to the streets below
‘Community’ back on every map
‘There’s no such thing as society’ crap
Consigned to the dustbin of fatuous phrases
For which small mercy, praise upon praises

The rhetoric today is somewhat kinder
And if you’ve forgotten here’s another reminder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
The ODPM did play a blinder
And it’s not a bad attempt at a metaphor, you know
Cutting a road through what once was ‘no go’
Defying the chaos of so many years
Block-paving futures through old vales of tears
And listening to what local people have said
(‘the little men’ as that big lad there said!)
Not just giving orders, consulting instead

Seeking out views from the quiet as well
As the eloquent and the ones who can spell
The harder to reach, the disabled, the shy
The youngsters, old soldiers tattooed ‘do or die’
The non-English speakers, the sad, the depressed
The ever hard-done-to, the chirpy, the stressed
And what do folk want if you ask them the question?

(I’ve nearly done now, but I’ll tell yer if yer listen!)

They’ll not be constrained by verbal congestion
There’s widespread consensus and they’ll tell you straight
Without the need to aspirate
A well built ‘ouse in a pleasant place
Well maintained in a bit of green space
Somewhere to garden, somewhere to park
Somewhere that still feels secure after dark
Somewhere that’s kept in consistent repair
Somewhere to love and to lavish with care
Where children can play in the way children play
What everyone wants at the end of the day
And I don’t mean a shop over Retail World way
A home of our own’s what I mean, OK?
A home of our own for us all – So I say
There’s reasons to welcome the Pathfinder
And if it makes mistakes as we’re all inclined ter
If it half achieves all the things it’s designed ter
(And I’ve heard her say’t same, no that other lass behind ‘er!)
Despite all the cynics, doom-merchants, sidewinders,
The whole procession of ministers and minders
Things all the Pathfinder folk are resigned ter
And that means the monkey and the organ-grinder
If we all work together we’ll have played a blinder
With the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder

Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
‘One skips in then another one behind her…’
Finding paths with the Pathfinder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder

Ray Hearne 15/5/06