Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

See list here of first nine wards' Labour Party selection meetings, just updated.
http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/running-total-3

More shortlisting tomorrow and next week.

Tags for Forum Posts: 2017, Labour, selections

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CPO...

John, quick question. Please answer honestly. Would you, given a choice, live on Broadwater Farm?

We disagree Kotkas.
The problem is more than about "housing supply". Yes, the numbers are of course important. But it's also about homes for who? And initially at least about a Big Lie that there is no alternative to inviting in a transnational property developer and destroying the existing homes of thousands of families. To "solve" a housing crisis?

As far as I know, none of these homes planned for demolition are in streets where the KoberTories now live.

They can't even apply a basic ethical principle of not doing unto others what they would never permit done to themselves and their families.

And please can I remind(?) tell you that the planned victims of their social experiment are still not allowed to see the hundreds of pages of secret yellow pages - documents which are part of the proposed deal with lendlease.

Imagine you were asked to agree to a property deal involving your home or business premises. Would you be happy if hundreds of pages were missing from a large and complex agreement you were being asked to assent to?

Consultation? Sure, like bedbugs consult before they bite you and your family.

It's really rather simple Alan. If you want purpose-made affordable housing, or generally more affordable homes for families you need to build more houses. There is no way around this. The HDV is a bold step in that direction, one, that inevitably will require the reconfiguration of some of the existing housing stock to fulfil that purpose. History is overflowing with examples where the state has come in to solve major externalities which require compulsory purchasing of land or property such as for example Balzalgette's sewer works, which effectively eliminated cholera. Goodness knows what you would have made out of this if you had been around... the great sewage swindle?

Wow! So you're comparing the HDV to curing Cholera and calling it a bold step? I'm calling it the lazy and commercially profitable way out of the current situation. How about you address my three points from earlier because I'm not disagreeing with yours, just your hyperbole.

Not quite. All I am saying is that one could have called any major infrastructure development that has complex, correlated social impacts ‘social cleansing’. I have stated previously that there is no immaculate conception in politics, business or life in general. I’m not saying it’s right. But that has no bearing on the financial or societal impact of the project. It just looks bad. And gives a blank cheque to excitable idealists like Alan to settle old scores and write over elaborated non sequiturs. Anyhow I think we agree on more than we are prepared to admit to and I have done my 14 hours of work today so I’ll le this rest...

Kotkas, Your cholera example suggests the direct opposite of what happened. It would appear that you haven't read about Dr Snow.

Solving the social problems of poverty and inequality won't be tackled by destroying people's homes and communities. Hunger, growing inequality, child poverty aren't a miasma to be tackled by dispossession.

Cholera could be tackled when its causes and mode of transmission were properly understood. After the Soho maps were drawn it still took some thirty years before the "miasma" theory (that Cholera was airborne) was no longer generally accepted.

I'm not diminishing the vital importance Joseph Bazalgette's sewer works. But it's important to understand that they worked as an unintended consequence of a theory about the "great stink" causing cholera.

The HDV is not quite so simple an answer to housing shortage. As Haringey's own Scrutiny Committee discovered. But the councillors who much enjoyed their free flights, free hotels, free dinners on Cannes yachts  etc weren't minded to go along to hear the evidence gathering sessions of their own Scrutiny Committee. Perhaps a splendid dinner at a posh restaurant should have been laid on for them?
Nor were the others minded to give up their perks and positions. Handed out by the Dear Leader in exchange for Kobsequious servility to her royal decisions.

My point perfectly illustrates the importance of recognising that large scale infrastructure projects have knock on impacts but can also have disproportionately large benefits. Not to draw some clumsly analogy between cholera and economic inequality. HDV has the potential to tackle an issue that is at the roots of economic inequality - home ownership. If you had a genuine understanding of the economic relationship between housing stock, housing costs and disposable income you wouldn’t waste quite so much time on colossal whinges which propagate the ver ideas that create long term poverty.

the hdv is just a bit of a workaround as we are stuck with the bloody right to buy, which removes decent subsidised homes within a few years of them being built. If we build actual social housing it will be threatened till we remove RTB.
It was also of course the biggest gamble ever. Nothing to stop Lendlease closing down whatever subsidiary company they create and walking away. Tottenham needs decent social housing to rent, not to add ££ to investors from Dubai.

Everyone is "centre left" these days. I personally am a member of a thoroughly middling coalition of realists who include members of both the Haringey Labour parties, the local Green Party, and the LibDems. They are some of the least silly, least moany,  most centrist, moderate, soft-left, midmost, medianists you could hope to meet on a not-too-sunny-not-too-chilly day in the middle of the borough.

Okay there are a few members of other left parties who may feed their tomatoes using Lenin on the compost at the bottom of their garden with Marx & Engels there too. But if I want some actual facts about the HDV I'll ask Defend Council Housing before I read the fantasists of the Progress Party.
This may be news to you but they were the right-wingers people who did hijack Haringey the Council several years ago. And have left us in the parlous state we now face. Here's their website.

If Anonymous "Labour voting resident" you're looking for "silly" comments perhaps you'd consider the HoL member who thinks Spurs is one regeneration answer. Please have a look at "Field of Schemes" a website and book. Google Neil deMause.

DFT

For people who don't know, "Billy Hole" is the nom-de-troll of Mr Will Hoyle. He once lived in Haringey and stood unsuccessfully as a Tory candidate The last I heard he was living in Enfield.

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