Church of England bishops have caused a bit of a stir down Westminster way ahead of the General Election by daring to air their collected opinions on the austerity programme which to some of us looks like an attempt to create a modern version of Victorian workhouses.

Get enough people onto zero-hours contracts and you can claim to have addressed the unemployment problem while allowing the one per cent that owns half the world's wealth to be better able to base themselves in the UK by creating a "flexible" workforce that is dirt cheap, so can compete with sweatshops elsewhere.

With 181 new billionaires (sic) created in the world during this global recession it could be argued that it is nice to know we Brits are doing our bit, but the people in charge of the CofE, an organisation that espouses values laid down by a man who was rather more interested in fairness than greed, have pointed out that something may be wrong in our priorities and many politicians have objected to their intervention.

Picking up on that chimed with my first ever visit to one of Glasgow's most deprived housing schemes last month and a meeting with one Richard McShane, who runs the Easterhouse Phoenix Development.

He had invited me to see what he is doing in the hope that publicity might help apply pressure on local and national politicians to provide support for some of his plans which all sound like practical and realistic ways of using sport as a force for good, identified and championed by a man of advanced middle age who knows the area and what can work there.

He told me how setting up a football team had helped address the gang culture in the area; showed me photographs of young lads on a poster promoting his project doing yoga, before explaining that the one in the middle was now dead and another, in the original photo but cropped off the end, had been stabbed 17 times. He explained how the appetite for yoga was generated for the same reason that there is a surprising level of interest in tennis there because in Andy Murray's much-criticised, raging outbursts they see a Scottish sportsman with whom they feel they can identify.

Easterhouse has no tennis court, he told me.

McShane's work and its aims are exceptional but he is profoundly frustrated because he believes that too many with the power to help him are talking a good game but failing to deliver.

He describes visits from local government and national agency dignitaries who have agreed heartily with the aims and approach proposed by Easterhouse Phoenix Ltd. He explains how he has waited and waited to hear back from them. What gets him particularly worked up at the moment is discussion of the good that one event in particular has done.

"I don't know what the legacy is. Where is it?" he demanded, his tone frustrated rather than aggressive.

"Give them their due, it was well run, the Commonwealth Games. It cost a lot of money and it was well run, but they're standing on that platform at Parkhead talking to the world about the Commonwealth Games. If they'd turned the camera to the east end of Glasgow to Shettleston, where the life expectancy of men is 54 to 56, is that a success? That's not a success, that's a failure."

There are echoes in his message of the CofE attack on self-serving claims by the wealthy that trickledown economics mean that if we create enough billionaires they will drag the poor up by raising overall standards of living.

McShane's own health has been pretty dreadful in recent years. He has undergone several operations and was due in for another when we spoke, but he finds the energy to pursue this because it matters so much to him.

The week after my visit I was, by pure coincidence, invited onto a BBC phone-in programme to discuss whether local authority/council-generated charitable trust-owned sports facilities are too expensive, a discussion aroused, I believe, by an article written by Herald colleague Daniel Sanderson, headlined: "Glasgow's poor being forced out of Commonwealth Games facilities MSPs told."

It revolved around complaints raised not in Easterhouse but in Drumchapel and an official of Glasgow Life was another of the guests.

The chairman of the Drumchapel Sports Hub also took part and made his case a little less forcefully than Richard might have, but articulately nonetheless. Others called in to reinforce his message about over-priced facilities.

The man from Glasgow Life spoke slowly and softly, occupying much air-time and disagreeing with no-one while explaining how the facilities his organisation offer represent excellent value for money.

My response that day was inspired by my visit to Easterhouse, which is that value for money is all very well, but is meaningless to those who have no money to spend.

Proper distribution of wealth involves using taxes to ensure that services are provided to improve the lot of as many in our society as possible, not to provide slightly more affordable amusement for those who already understand the benefits of aspiration.

Unlike the Anglican clerics Richard McShane is no preacher, he is an ordinary bloke trying to make a difference in his own backyard. His tone and message are not that soothing, but he deserves to be listened to and to be supported through actions rather than words.