Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group — the Kwug Blog

Housing list exclusions

Izzy Koksal of Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth (HASL) writes:

Have people seen this article in the Guardian about how local councils are getting rid of people on their housing waiting lists and reducing the criteria for social housing even further. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/26/remove-homeless-single-mother-housing-list?CMP=twt_gu Each local council is doing their own thing, so maybe we could all research what's going on/what the criteria is being changed to our area? Perhaps we could organise a London Coalition Against Poverty action, co-ordinating actions around this in each of our boroughs? And maybe Boycott Workfare could get involved too — as Hammersmith and Fulham's plans sound quite a lot like workfare — people who have 'given back to the community' will be eligible so people will be forced to volunteer in order to access social housing. 

Swheatie of the KUWG is reminded of Tory ex-Secretary of State for Social Security Peter Lilley MP's 1992 Tory Party Conference announcement of a "little list," "a plan to 'close down the something for nothing society,' delivered in the form of a parody of the Lord High Executioner's "little list" song from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan:

"I've got a little list / Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out / And who never would be missed / They never would be missed. / There's those who make up bogus claims / In half a dozen names / And councillors who draw the dole / To run left-wing campaigns / They never would be missed / They never would be missed. / There's young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue / And dads who won't support the kids / of ladies they have ... kissed / And I haven't even mentioned all those sponging socialists / I've got them on my list / And there's none of them be missed / There's none of them be missed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lilley#Satirist

Did not the Nazis have 'lists'? See Pastor Niemoller's 'First they came ...', for example. Whatever Peter Lilley and his followers have in mind, those he claims will not be missed have other ideas....