The Importance of Air Quality Monitoring

The Guardian gives an example of central government running down public services gradually, in the proposal to remove requirements for air quality monitoring.  It is worth going through the steps that bit by bit damage and eventually destroy the public good in this case, as it is fairly typical.

1) Demonise public services as red tape and bureaucracy.  This can be done by a number of often spurious or misleading stories of waste or extravagance presented as typical of local democracy.  As anyone familiar with the pronouncements of Eric Pickles knows, they can be highly misleading or even totally untrue.  The end result is that public spending start to be seen as automatically bad.
2) Remove the need for "non essential" services that actually underpin wider services.  In this case, any effective measures against polluters will become impossible because there will be no legal evidence to back it up, and tackling air quality in general will become more difficult as there will be less evidence to make a business/political case for intervention.
3) Create a financial crisis in institutions so that make short term cuts even at the expense of longer term goals.

The short term effects in Brent of cuts to air quality monitoring will be to make it even more difficult to take action on Neasden Goods Yard, one of the worst air pollution sites in London.  The Environment Agency tends to drag its feet on enforcement on this site anyway.  Without a record of air quality measurements maintained over time, there would not be a basis for legal action.

The longer term effect of not monitoring the high level pollution of parts of Brent would be to reduce the pressure for measures to improve air quality, particularly regarding transport emissions.

Another job well done for Eric Pickles.