Market forces, public money, electoral decisions

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

At this 2015 UK General Election the Conservative Manifesto says that more people should have the 'right to buy' and councils and social landlords should be forced to sell properties in 'more desirable' areas.(1) Yet it is now fairly well-known that Thatcherite Right to Buy has increased the social housing shortage and that supply shortage led rogue landlords to sponge off public money before the 'benefit cap' that was brought in by the Conservative-Lib Dem (aka 'Con-Dem' coalition) that 'came to power' in the wake of the 2010 UK General Election.(2)

Yet it was a Daily Mail style mode of 'investigative reporting' that led to the benefit cap as Housing Benefit claimants — especially asylum seekers — that got the blame for how much was screwed out of the public purse for the benefit of the real spongers who were dodgy private landlords.(3)

Now, at the time of 2015 UK General Election 2015, it is timely that

1. Panorama produced an investigation into rogue landlords milking the system, Panorama: The Great Housing Benefit Scnadal(4) and 
2. Argotina followed that up with a blog piece relating such a private rented market's poor service to tenants in her 'more desirable' neighbourhood. Welfare Tales: Rogue Landlords and the Benefit Cap(5)

The enemies of 'red tape' have already extracted the legislation's teeth

Here is an excerpt from Argotina's blog piece, Rogue Landlords and the Benefit Cap:

The house next door to mine, once a family home, is now 4 flats containing 11 people, with no fire exit from the top floor. The tenants are frightened of a potential fire, they have small children and live in the converted attic. But they cannot tell the council because they’ll just be evicted, and its nigh on impossible to find an affordable flat in London, no matter how cramped and unsafe. This is a working family, not on benefits.

And its not as if the government doesn’t know. Here’s a Panorama program saying the same thing from 2010: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…/fron…/newsid_9122000/9122529.stm This was before the benefit cap.

The benefit cap means that NOBODY on benefits can afford a private rented flat in Inner London, or most of outer London. There are no council flats, they are being destroyed in their thousands and replaced by ‘luxury apartments’. The local authorities are being forced to satisfy their statutory obligations to house the vulnerable by placing them into slum rat holes, or move them hundreds of miles away from their support networks to where rents are cheaper. This is pushing up rents outside of London, too.

The Residential Landlords Association agrees there’s a problem, but says we don’t need more legislation. They say the existing legislation is perfectly adequate, the problem is that savage cuts to Local Authorities budgets means they cant enforce the laws that already exist. Last week the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that over the course of this Parliament, the budgets of local authority enforcement departments have been cut by over 37% per head of population in England. http://news.rla.org.uk/private-rental-market-is-being…/

So, Local Authority budgets need to be sufficinet to enforce legislation, does it not? General Election time is a time that helps instal the Central Government that will administer tax payers' money to local authorities to act locally.

You are not only deciding for yourself. Decide compassionately and wisely

This General Election is a time of decision. If you are registered to vote, think of those who are not registered to vote. How about people whose electoral registration letters have been opened by their rogue landlords and thus confiscated? Rogue landlords help being exposed, as the Panorama programme showed. Perhaps a vote for tougher enforcement will lead not only to such landlords being 'outed' but also to being forced out of practice?

So how about raising these issues with candidates in your area for the 2015 UK General Election? You can get in touch with them by way of the Your Next MP interactive portal website. (Of course, that is assuming that you are able to get online. Many people are not; and given the online-only methods of pollsters, what sort of world is being created with and for the exclusion of people who cannot get online? Universal Credit that Conservatives are pledged to bring in at even further taxpayers' expense really amounts to Furthered Offline Exclusion because you have to be online to register for it!)

See also

• Vote for Policies interactive portal website (7)
• Vote Match interactive portal website (8)
• Councils' out-of-area placements breaking the law:  Councils in London have broken the law by placing more than 8,000 families in other areas without properly notifying the receiving authority.(9)

Notes

(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32295970
(2) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-policy-blog/2009/03/iain-duncan-smith-admits-ghett/
and
http://www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/manifestos-no-secure-tenancy-policy-for-families-to-raise-children-in-community-solidaritypensioner-parents-nearby/
(3) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-policy-blog/2010/07/asylum-seekers-2m-home-but-who/
(4) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05s99p1/panorama-the-great-housing-benefit-scandal accessed 27 April 2015
(5) https://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/rogue-landlords-and-the-benefit-cap/
(6) https://yournextmp.com/
(7) https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/ accessed 27 April 2015
(8) http://www.votematch.org/ accessed 27 April 2015
(9) http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/councils-out-of-area-placements-breaking-the-law/7009398.article accessed 27 April 2015

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IDS on 'Right to Buy ghettoisation'

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

This timely gem came to me just now by way of a keyword search of the Community Care online magazine website:

Iain Duncan Smith admits ghettoisation under Tory housing policy(1)

By Mike McNabb on 25 March , 2009 in Uncategorised

Conservative MPs are famous for having their epiphany moments: Michael Portillo’s (3) face at his constituency’s general election count in 1997 signified his; former party leader William Hague, who fought the 2001 general election as the scourge of asylum seekers, now deputises for David ”hoodie hugger” Cameron; and then there is Iain Duncan Smith.

Smith has now admitted that ”right-to-buy”, the keystone of housing policy of the Thatcher/Major years, was perhaps not such a good idea after all.(4)

For a Tory, Smith has been taking an unnatural interest in social justice recently through the medium of his think tank.(5) But his comment that the right-to-buy scheme has ghettoised those who could not afford to take up the kind offer is revealing. It would have been easier to direct his barbs at a Britain ”broken” by Labour.

He says of the Thatcher administration’s right-to-buy policy: ”We didn’t have any real sense of where this might go and what needed to happen. Big social reforms should have taken place then, and they never did. While the economy was moving on, society was not. Swathes of the population got left behind.”

Moreover, Smith’s coments were made to the Fabian Society,(6) not known for its espousal of all things Tory.

The question must be asked: where is Smith heading? It couldn’t surely be a case of ”by the left, quick march!” Could it?

That keyword search included the search term mcnabb. Mike McNabb wrote the Community Care 'Social Policy' blog until his services were dispensed with by Community Care in 2011. Given his output on such matters as CareUK, I would not be in the least bit surprised if Mike McNabb's services were disposed of on account of advertisers' pressures.(7)

How times have changed for this 2015 UK General Election Conservative Party Manifesto! (8)

See also Bob Holman's blog piece: Poor must meet Gordon.(9)

Notes

(1) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-policy-blog/2009/03/iain-duncan-smith-admits-ghett/

(2) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-policy-blog/MikeMcNabb/

(3) Michael Portillo links has fallen to 'page rot' that happens over the years

(4) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/duncan-smith-attacks-key-thatcherite-policy-1651728.html

(5) http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/

(6) Fabian Society link has fallen to 'page rot' that happens over the years

(7)  CareUK mcnabb link: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/search-results/?q=right%20to%20buy%20mcnabb

(8) http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/right-to-buy-extension-david-cameron-is.html

(9) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-care-experts-blog/2008/02/poor-must-meet-gordon/

'Right to buy' extension: David Cameron is for workers? Or is it 'David Cameron is for wankers'?

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

The Labour manifesto stuff about 'fiscal responsibility' and 'hard working families' was nasty to a decades long disabled jobseeker, but today's launch of the Tory manifesto with its extension of 'right to buy' and housing extensions selling off social housing homes once tenants have been moved out is something I find potentially gut wrenching at a time when I should be nursing an injured finger from an accident this morning.

But I have to get this message out.

The BBC website proclaims:

Election 2015: David Cameron to pledge right-to-buy extension(1)

Mr Cameron will say he wants to pread the "dream" of home ownership more widely
Photo and caption: BBC website

• From the section Election 2015

A Conservative government would extend the right-to-buy scheme for housing association tenants in England, David Cameron will say, as he unveils his party's general election manifesto.

The PM will say up to 1.3 million tenants could buy their homes at a discount as a result, insisting the Tories are the party of working people....

 The photographic backdrop to to the photo of David Cameron delivering the Conservative manifesto proclaims:

STRONG LEADERSHIP
A CLEAR ECONOMIC PLAN
A BRIGHTER, MORE SECURE FUTURE

The biggest problem there is that the 'clear economic plan' is built upon lies and half-truths and it includes a plan for the privatisation of what remains of the UK's social housing stock and placing it in the clutches of global billionaires.(2)

Clearly a 'corporatist' economic plan

The 'right to buy' extension is the 'carrot'. How much will taxpayers including those of us who don't pay income tax but do pay VAT be subsidising that instead of investment in green energy and home insulation against global warming and fuel poverty? But of course, according to the currently prevailing ideology, anyone who is not in waged employment or 'financially independent of the state' is a 'useless eater', aren't we?(3)

The 'stick' is more a stick extension really. The Cameron-Clegg coalition Government tightened the financial screws on 'social landlords' to the point that they were already keen to 'up stakes' in 'more desirable areas', selling off properties there and shipping poorer tenants out to areas where there were even fewer work opportunities.(4) (We now have school teachers priced out of living in Camden where they teach commuting in from Folkestone!(5))

The Conservative 2015 UK General Election manifesto — if accepted by the electorate — would

"force councils to sell properties ranked in the most expensive third of their type in the local area, once they become vacant."(6)

And how do council properties become vacant? The coalition's 'welfare reforms' installed 'bedroom tax', reductions in council tax benefit and a burgeoning of benefit sanctions, forcing people into rent arrears and leading several into eviction.(7)
 http://z2k.org/2015/04/z2k-casework-in-2014/
and http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system

In conclusion for now, the UK's media and the majority of mainstream politicians have allowed the property market practices that were the real cause of the 2008 banks crash to get away with murder,
not only of poor people through disability benefit eligibility testing, benefit sanctions,
but also of truly civil society while hoodwinking people in waged employment to despise jobseekers and people incapable of anything like a 16 hour working week as undeserving.

David Cameron is for workers? Or is it 'David Cameron is for wankers'?


(Actually, the song video chorus line says 'David Camerson is a w@nker'.)

Notes

(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32295970

(2) 'Right to buy' is a means of privatisation very much in line with neoliberalism or 'corporatism's' 'holy trinity' as exposed by Naomi Klein in her incisive book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

1. privatisation
2. cuts in public spending
3. deregulation [the cutting of 'red tape']

http://www.naomiklein.org/reviews/ms-magazine-review-shock-doctrine

(3) 'Useless eaters' is the term Nazis used to describe disabled people. And their extermination of disabled people was firstly through denial of services, secondly through forced sterilisation, and thirdly through making parents so desperate that a parent writing into Hitler's 'bright ideas' mailbag' was so desperate that he asked for the 'mercy killing' of his learning disabled son, and Hitler thought: "What a great idea!" (Memorised from a TV documentary viewed on daytime tv.)

(4) BBC File on 4: 'What price social housing?' 27 October 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dslf1

 (5) http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2015/apr/priced-out-camden-teachers-commute-rail-folkestone

(6) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32295970

(7) http://z2k.org/2015/04/z2k-casework-in-2014/
and http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system

(8)

Causes of London's housing crisis

Title above by Dude Swheatie of the KUWG

From Z2K

Z2K at the Mayor’s Community Reception

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Emma Lough

What did we learn from Boris Johnson at last week’s Mayoral Community Reception – besides banter of beavers and babies?

That London is facing a housing crisis. Many of the guests at the reception, like Z2K, work directly with the poorest and most vulnerable who it affects most acutely. In recent decades, the lack of investment in social housing, combined with the introduction of right to buy schemes for council homes has generated a serious shortage of affordable housing in the capital. Add to this a welfare reform agenda which is committed to removing the safety net for the poorest households by capping housing benefit and penalising families who are under occupying their homes, despite a shortage of smaller properties to move them to.

Continue reading  on Z2K website→

Brent ARC opposing state racism, while Swheatie points to the real source of UK housing and job shortages

From Martin Francis' Wembley Matters blog

Preface by Swheatie of the KUWG

LB Brent is one of the London boroughs targeted by a racist Home Office witch hunt and Brent Anti-Racism's demonstration and awareness raising exercise in Wembley this morning cannot get everywhere.

So I have decided to post the start of Martin Francis' blog piece about the matter on this blog, concluding with a link to the full blog post on the Wembley Matters blog. The KUWG blog has viwers around the globe, and so hopefully there will also be viewers from the other London boroughs targeted.

The Home Office may have threatening arms, but the KUWG currently has a global following that should include the other London boroughs where the current ethnicity-based witch hunt is taking place.

And Swheatie wishes to point out that the London housing crisis arises more from successive UK government's under-investment in social housing stock, taxpayer-subsidised Right to Buy's erosion of social housing stock, and the greed of global capitalists who love gambling on shortages and spongeing off the UK state in their own ways.

And capitalism loves exporting jobs to wherever the working conditions are most slave like in the interests of profit, while global corporations pressurise nation states and the EU to make conditions for the reserve army of labour/slavery ever harder so that those who can will take up whatever 'job offers' are presented to them. And the Tory flagship 'Universal Credit' will, it is feared, bully the people claiming Working Tax Credits to find more working hours.

The real problem when people claim Universal Credit is more likely to be skinflint employers providing wages that are too low, and/or limits to the number of hours the employee can manage to make.

Brent Anti-Racism Campaign steps up rights campaign over Operation Skybreaker

Brent is one of five London boroughs to be chosen as the target for Operation Skybreaker. This follows targeting of the borough by racist organisations such as the BNP, Britain First and the South East Alliance and by the UK Border Agency and Home Office through the racist van and raids on tube stations.

Today the Brent Against Racism Campaign (BrentARC) will be in Wembley Central  distributing the leaflets below informing the public and businesses about their rights regarding Operation Skybreaker.

The leaflet below is particularly aimed at small business owners:

Continue reading this blog piece on the Wembley Matters blog....

Liberal Democrats & Right to Buy — from Zacchaeus 2000 website

Liberal Democrats & the Right to Buy

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Marc Francis

Amidst a disappointing party conference season for housing aficionados, one policy announcement stood out head and shoulders above the others.  Lib Dem Business Secretary, Vince Cable’s damning verdict on his own Government’s policy of massively increasing discounts for tenants exercising their Right to Buy as one that “has done enormous damage” and one “we have to stop” raised plenty of eyebrows.

Of course, the motion was only really a restatement of existing Lib Dem policy to let individual local councils decide.  But that is a policy they have singularly failed to implement in Government as former Tory Housing Minister, Grant Shapps increased the maximum discount in London from £16,000 to £100,000.  If any of the succession of Lib Dem junior ministers in the Department for Communities & Local Government objected at the time, they certainly didn’t manage to persuade their Deputy Prime Minister to block it.

The announcement of this increased discount led to a flood of applications. And while property valuations ultimately put many off purchasing, the number of council homes sold last year was more than treble what is was when the Coalition took office. Those numbers are still nowhere near what they were in the Right to Buy’s 1980s and 1990s heyday. But they are a continuing drain on the supply of genuinely affordable social housing where it is needed most. And they certainly are not being replaced one-for-one as ministers promised.

Equally worrying are the property companies that loan tenants the money to exercise their Right to Buy and then let them out privately have made a return to London’s council estates. The reduced discount was John Prescott’s response to this exploitation of the policy back in 2003 after back bench Labour MPs and Council Leaders demanded action to stem the fire sale of council housing.  London Assembly Member, Tom Copley, wrote an excellent report revealing the number of ex-council homes now being let privately. But few of today’s generation of Labour MPs seem to be raising the issue.

Mr Cable has a habit of flashing his ankle to the party faithful at conference and failing to follow it up in the House of Commons – Help to Buy being exhibit A!  But he was strongly supported by Party President, Tim Farron, who represents a rural Lake District constituency, where the Right to Buy has had a devastating impact in pricing families out of their areas.  Farron is widely seen as the favourite to be next Party Leader when Nick Clegg goes and so it was no surprise that the motion was overwhelmingly carried.

In a thoughtful piece today, Guardian Housing Editor, Hannah Fearn describes the Right to Buy as “a policy for a bygone era” and praises the Lib Dems’ “attempt to consign it to the dustbins of Whitehall”.  There is no doubt Cable, Farron and conference delegates deserve real credit for setting their face against a policy which is not just totemic, but popular amongst the public – especially when Labour’s front bench is being so weak on it....

Continue reading on Z2K website....

Right to Buy exacerbating housing crisis — Z2K

From Zacchaeus 2000 — Justice for vulnerable debtors

Last week’s revelation that the London Investment Property Group is exploiting the Right to Buy to purchase what is left of council housing in central London is desperate news for those homeless and overcrowded families suffering at the sharp end of the Capital’s housing crisis.

In truth, the return of these predatory companies was an inevitable consequence of the Prime Minister’s ideologically-driven decision to inflate Right to Buy discounts to £100,000 and cut the qualifying period to three years....

Continue reading on Z2K website....