Is Caroline Flint thick?

She said on Today prog this morning how so many people in social housing were unemployed – yeh well divvy it’s because you carried on the Tories policy of allowing people to buy up council housing so reducing the stock. Thus only the unemployed etc have access to it. Oh my giddy aunt and this woman’s a Minister! She wouldn’t be pandering to the crowd would she?

The problem really lies in failed Labour councils that do jackshit for deprived communites by using macho `tough` asbo centred policies on crime and disorder. Thus employers perceive it as a problem area and are loathe to employ people or if they do they enter very much on the bottom of the ladder so as to exacerbate the cycle of deprivation.

Compare that with Stockport, Hull and Liverpool who have won plaudits from the Home Office in cutting crime. Indeed the Guardian had a write up of it a whole article on Stockport. The answer is to have proper joined up thinking and communication between departments locally, effective officers on the ground and a Liberal regime that lifts the young offender out of a spiral of criminality through asb contracts and also works with partners particularly the Police to tackle the older criminal element.