TECHNOBUREAUCRACY ANO CITY LIFE The fìerce competition which has always exited between the Home Office and the Department of the Environment over the issue of « urban deprivation » and the « inner city problem » prompted the DoE to produce another scheme shortly after the announcement of the Comprehensive Community Programmes. The DoE's new scheme was known as the « Area Management Trials' whose aims included analysis of problems, formulation of policies, coordination between various authorities, etc. etc ... which was to be done through an « Area Manager » for each area chosen. Still in 1974, the EEC also announced its own Poverty Programme, which was part of the EEC's broader « Social Action Programme ». In Britain it produced a network of seven family advice centres to help the « poorest families come to terms with the particular ill effects of extreme poverty ». It is clear, therefore, that these « poverty programmes » have developed into a self-perpetuating but erratically-coordinated bureaucratic framework in wich the growing number of « urban deprivation experts » could be employed. Furthermore, by concentrating on action in specifìc areas and laying great emphasis on self-help, the actual amount of public investment in the inner city areas was actually decreased. Of course, both the Labour and Conservative govemments were able to point these schemes and programmes to show that they were indeed concerned about the inner city « problem » and were busy initiating action to deal with it. The « poverty programme » also served to alleviate the extra stress that would have placed on the Welfare System in these areas of « deprivation, since to have attempted to meet the demand for the already existing forms of subsidy and other forms of aid would have proved extremely costly. What is more, the main reports which were produced by this army of « prolifìc » experts merely re-stated in academic jargon what the inhabitans of these deprived areas knew already: if you live in one of these areas the chances that you will be unemployed for long periods, living in slum conditions, maybe evicted from your home, wait a long time for hospital treatment, that your children are more likely to die in infancy, and that if they survive they will receive the lowest possible standard of education, are very high. 17
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