I don’t know much about money laundering. It’s not my thing (despite what the bank seems to think if you ever need to change a signatory or use cash!). However, my limited understanding is that if you take the dirty money (from crime) and you process it enough times, through companies and individuals it can’t be traced back to you. UK Governments over the last few years have taken this principle and applied it to responsibility. I first noticed this (belatedly) after Grenfell. Central Government had laundered the issue of cladding out to the local authority, who in turn passed it on to the local housing association, who passed it on to the contractor, who passed it on the architect who had never done this kind of work before. This person is a private company at best, to whom we have no recourse of accountability. All we have is retrospective legal action. Meanwhile the national government looks like it’s clean. Responsibility laundering is a bit like buying a yell
Warning: what I’m about to write includes some critique of middle-class culture and values. If you are not prepared to hear that, don’t read this. For the last twenty years I have, by intention, lived in the poorest ten percent of communities in the country. For the last ten years I have served as an ordained resident of some of the kinds of communities that have voted heavily for the Conservative Party. These are my observations on what I see as a long-term disengagement from the Labour Party by the people I live in and among. It is tempting to say “oh it was Corbyn” or “it was Brexit”. They are the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the arms race and militarisation of various other factors (if you want a cuppa to go through that analogy you are very welcome). Here are my top ten of why respectable working-class communities have gone blue. Let me explain ‘respectable’ working class. It’s a term Lynsey Hanley uses in in her book of the same name. I may not have her exact sense of wh