Out of thousands of streets in the UK the BBC selected a street in Preston for ‘The Street That Cut Everything’ broadcast last week. Meant to highlight the difficulty of providing public services with a limited budget it seemed to score more on Big Brother personal trials and conflict.
In this world the council empty your bin onto the street and then turn off the streetlights, some might say what’s new. Then at night when it’s completely dark mindless graffiti, fly tipping and a mass dog fouling exercise occur. What’s new? This being TV, solutions must be found immediately, wrong ones are penalised and conflict dramatised.
Novel solutions like storing waste in the lounge and filling your garage with fly tipped junk are used. A spotlight is hired for street lighting. But these are just an inconvenience.
The most contentious part is social care. One family needs extra financial help because of low income. An old lady had previously been taken by council supplied bus to the shops and residential centre. As the final twist a lady wanted help from this street for her father who lived somewhere else.
We all had opinions but you couldn’t help admire Mr Can do, the caravan salesman who arranged the lights and generally kept upbeat. A lot of people put in a lot of elbow grease. Some were good at talking but weren’t seen doing a lot. Some seemed to want more than they appeared to be putting back, although in the limited time you couldn’t get a full picture. Overall it seemed as good a range of sensible and decent people as you’d find.
The success appeared to be with the old lady who was an invisible street member until the show, whether this lasts beyond the show time will tell. The most interesting was the resident who expressed entitlement, an idea that often causes strong feelings, and you might wonder if this scene was set up to stir the pot for the show. The residents voted to provide all the needs even though they had no money left but not without it causing bad feeling from those who felt they didn’t have much but managed.
One case thrown in seemed to test reality. Whether to support a residents disabled father who lived elsewhere. Wouldn’t the street where the father lived pay for his help in reality? Yet it was agreed, with some being in no doubt it was right, and some seeming to have given up.
In the end Mr Can Do said the programme had created divisions that may never heal and the lady who wanted benefits said she’d move. That’s what you get when your personal life is laid open to those nearby to judge. It made decision making look difficult and recognition for council services. Yet, if you’re thrown in the deep end with no training it will look difficult and as councils have more than council tax for income it wasn’t clear that the refunded tax was all they were entitled to, so their budget was probably low.
Overall it scored on entertainment and gave some perspective of decision making, but didn’t give a broad or deep insight or have any after programme discussion into what was learnt. Some people expressed more sympathy with the council, and why not. In general councils do a good job in a very civilised way, but it might be you think it could be done even better or cheaper.