A few weeks ago, I tried to contact a Trading Standards Office on behalf of an elderly person who had been ripped off by a conman. No, you can’t do it any more: you have to go through the Citizens Advice Bureau(!). So I filed my complaint with them. Here’s what happened.
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It was as clear a case as there could be. I had discovered enough about the conman to put the fear of God into him, and he confessed to how he operates, and told me who his partners are. He works with an agency that specialises in preying on elderly, confused people.
He instantly repaid the money. But my interest was in ensuring that he can't do it again. Otherwise, he will continue to prey on other elderly people, who don’t happen to know an investigative journalist.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but I got the impression from the Citizens Advice Bureau that the county Trading Standards Office would get in touch with me to let me know how the case was proceeding. Silence. So today I rang the CAB again.
No, they told me: the only reason Trading Standards would contact me is if they needed more information. But as I supplied them with everything they need to know, that's unlikely. There's no way for me to contact them. They don’t speak to the public any more.
So for all I know, the case could have been filed in the wastepaper bin. Given the extreme budgetary pressures councils now face, this is quite likely. Because we can’t speak to them, we have no way of knowing whether or not they are following up and stopping such conmen.
In other words, it’s another example of how, through outsourcing, government becomes opaque and unaccountable. We have no means of knowing whether issues are resolved, criminals are being stopped and our legal rights are being upheld.
Such losses of accountability don't bring people onto the streets in protest, and don't make the headlines. But together they amount to the gradual, universal withdrawal of state protection for the vulnerable: a slow-burning catastrophe.
Sometimes austerity involves sudden rupture: an immediate loss of services that we notice and object to. More often it's death by 1000 cuts: incremental destruction of the public realm, leaving us with thin, inaccessible, dysfunctional services and endless waiting on the phone.
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