With only four months to go Labour can win, but only if two sets of conditions are fulfilled. Firstly, that there is internal discipline generating external unity, with the usual suspects forswearing any ‘advice’, at least until 7 May (Blair and Mandelson please note). This means Progress supporting the Miliband ‘ left’ line, which merely points in a […]
Posts under ‘Housing’
Angeline Jolie and the mansion tax
Nov 27th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Oh noes, whatever are we to do? Angelina Jolie might be put off from moving Brad and the kids to London. Why? Because of the mansion tax. I’m sure some Tories are happy that Jolie has, as we used to say in Trot circles, objectively lined up with their opposition to the tax. I don’t […]
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Tory deregulated market now delivers Rachman-style revenge evictions
Nov 26th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The New Era housing estate scandal in Hoxton, east London, highlighted by Aditya Chakrabortty, tells a poignant and tragic story about how Victorian philanthropic ideals has been transformed into commercial assets in play in the international market with not a shred of concern about the human consequences. Arthur Barsht, the man who built this 93-flat […]
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Facing eviction by Christmas, by publicly owned banks with no public service ethos
Nov 13th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.When because of the bankers’ crash RBS, Lloyds, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley went bust and were taken over by the State, one of the worst indictments of the Blair-Brown governments – copied and exacerbated further by this current Tory government – was that the losses were borne by the taxpayers, but they continued […]
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Labour must outflank the SNP from the Left
Oct 25th, 2014 by Neil Findlay.This article was written prior to the resignation of Johann Lamont and is reposted here because it is a clear political statement by someone who many on the Left in Scotland would like to see as the next leader of Scottish Labour, and covers the same ground as Neil’s speech to the Campaign for Socialism conference […]
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Tenants excluded as social housing flogged off in billionaire investor bazaars
Oct 17th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.MIPIM is the name of the sales fair to flog off Britain. This is the latest extravaganza of market fundamentalism which is now sweeping Britain. It is being pitched at this moment is a huge hall in London which brings together property developers, billionaire investors from all over the world and, incongruously, local council officials […]
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A safe, secure, affordable home is a right
Sep 22nd, 2014 by Steve Turner.The following is the text of Unite Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner’s speech to Labour’s conference in Manchester We welcome Labour’s policy statements and the clear commitments contained within it to build more homes – and we equally welcome Ed Miliband’s comments yesterday. However, we must never forget that a – safe – secure and affordable roof over your head […]
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35,000 low-cost homes lost last year by government’s open market policies
Aug 7th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The government’s latest housing policy is to force social landlords who receive government funding to build new homes to convert a proportion of their existing social rented homes into the Tories’ new ‘affordable rent’ tenure. ‘Affordable rent’ in government-speak actually means the opposite. It means pricing rents at up to 80% of local average open […]
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Private tenants caught in a rent trap – and sinking
Jul 25th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.There are so many repositories of destitution and hopelessness in Britain today that adding another does not evoke the horror it should: There the million or more persons who have been ‘sanctioned’ – deprived of all their benefit income by DWP for 4 weeks for some trivial (or invented) infringement of the benefit rules, then […]
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Government figures show bedroom tax is not working
Jul 20th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.As Jo Moore infamously emailed at the time of the 9/11 catastrophe in the US, “now is a good time to release bad news”. The Tory government has clearly taken this to heart. Having built up an enormous fanfare to the elevation of women in the reshuffle which captivated the headlines, the Tories then used […]
