Remember NL cold-eyed apparatchik Caroline Flint who once upon a time said regarding her big plans for council housing:
It would be a big change of culture from the time when the council handed someone the keys and forgot about them for 30 years. The question that we should ask of new tenants is what commitment they will make to improve their skills, find work, and take the support that is available.
Well, fast forward it and it seems Flint’s replacement, Margaret Beckett is singing from the same hymn sheet. The Green Paper on Social Housing has been delayed until next year but many of Flint’s mean spirited plans are still there. Proposals include higher rents, “get a job” requirement, tightening up applications for priority housing and anything else they can think of to penalise the poor though Beckett is supposedly ‘uncomfortable’ with the nasty proposals. Plus, remember there’s an election coming up…..
Although she will be uncomfortable with any punitive proposals, Mrs Beckett is under pressure to produce reforms before the next general election.
So…. it’s more of the same when it comes to NL’s authoritarian “lets screw the poor” ideology. With unemployment, recession, repossessions due to the economic crisis now is not the time to start attacking the poor in this society. NL has a deep loathing for the poor with these endless punitive attacks. The core being that they blame the poor for being…well, poor. And again, NL is attacking its core voters. What is this, NL ministers for a Tory victory?
Basic social democratic demands include more social housing (and they could easily do this by pumping money into social programmes that could reflate the economy but haven’t….rather they go for bailing out bankers), affordable rents and improved tenancy rights.
Stop penalising the poor…penalise the tax havens instead!
November 11, 2008 at 11:30 pm |
Just imagine the bureaucracy involved…housing offices keeping tabs on your pay and the type of work that you do and look for. Presumeably this will be farmed out to some outsourcing company so a lot of the extra revenue from bumping up the rents will go into corporate profits (this conuldn’t be NL’s real motive could it?). Yet more intrusive state meddling in peoples’s lives. And what incentive will tenants have to get better jobs when the result is higher rents?
I do remember though in the LP in South Wales in the 80’s some of the right wing in the party seemed to loathe working class people. This may sound odd but their social consiciousness seemed to consist of resenting the fact that most working class people did not seem to appreciate all that was done for them by their betters. These attitudes probably always existed in the LP: NL just brought them to the fore. Comrade Flint seems to enbody this attitude. Like the tories deep down they think that what the working class needs is another kicking.
November 12, 2008 at 12:18 am |
Tonybc’s got a point. The difference between patrician Labourism and the more radical varieties that understood the need for participation is clear in the history of the LP.
But at the end of the day, what’s being offered is not a solution to the shortage of council housing – the answer to which is, build/acquire more houses for council use. What is being suggested would benefit private landlords and the parasitic banks – providing them with more customers as council tenants are turfed out of their homes.
November 12, 2008 at 2:12 pm |
Can’t disagree with any of this, your article Louise and the comments are spot on.
My only worry is when will NL cotton on to the Spanish system of allocation. Here it is a lottery, everyone who is apparently elligible turns up at the local conreence centre their names are put into a drum and the winning names picked out are allocated very scarce VPO homes (council housing).
Perhaps NL would have show their last salary slip before their names are put in the drum.
November 14, 2008 at 2:04 pm |
Totally.
If only an ounce of New Labour’s determination to do over ’scroungers’ and ‘welfare leeches’ was shown to go after tax avoidance and the corporate hordes who famously pay “less tax than their cleaners, Britain would be a slightly better place.
I am a touch worried because -though it never stopped- there’s a particularly aggressive revival of anti-poor rhetoric. The recent case of Baby P is a case in point.
http://mymarilyn.blogspot.com/2008/11/right-wing-bile-on-baby-p-case.html
We are now at the point where “welfare dependance” is portrayed as the root cause behind pure evil behaviour such as the mauling of children.
November 14, 2008 at 2:08 pm |
Im seeing this happen with our local RSL, (for who the wife works) The amount of information required to get a “good customer” status, which is what you need to stand any chance of gaining a property within the next 5 years, is buliding by the week. They require wage slips or proof of income, a breakdown of benefits if you are in reciept of them. a visit to your current place of living, an interview. and on and on and on.
Basically they want to cherry pick the best customers (i always thought they were tennants?) to fit in with the social utopia they want to create. I remember a time when there was an abundance of council housing in my area, you could literally have a house the same day, it may not have been the best area but it was a start. now they have levelled full estates and created a shortage, creating a market that they have greater control over.
November 14, 2008 at 11:10 pm |
In Dublin they had a lottery for affordable housing, ended this year I think. The desperation that that, and what you report, smacks of is something to behold isn’t it? It’s what you say, social democratic response, let alone those further left are now all but entirely blunted.
November 14, 2008 at 11:38 pm |
Indeed WbS. I agree with what you say.