Running total #5.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by TimP on December 5, 2017 at 13:42

Pilots always a good idea.

Also independent review and analyis

But not by former SWP types

I do see Shelter and the labour mayor indicating merit in the HDV approach

also need to face reality of current situation - better to move forward with something well underway and make better than scrap due to dogma

better to

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on December 5, 2017 at 14:49

Former SWP types?  Have you been reading the latest pathetic excuses by councillors who've been deselected by their ward branches? That the members who didn't vote for them were reds-under-the-bed?

Or maybe you'd like to tell us your name and where you sit in this discussion?

Having lost the substantive argument and done a cowardly no-show at the selection meetings some deselected councillors have now descended into the gutter and are scratching around for what people said and wrote decades ago.

As if it really mattered a damn. Take a real claim by someone in Haringey leadership that the HDV gives everybody a guaranteed right to return on the same conditions and that this is set in stone. I don't believe or disbelieve the claim simply because I hear that a person making it used to be a Green, or a LibDem. Or of no Party. I look it up and check it out for myself. In this case finding that the Council's claim is untrue.

The dishonest construction of a red scare to smear political opponents is a symptom of the disease currently afflicting Haringey Council. They are hollow defeated people with nothing left to say except: "whisper, whisper, so-and-so used to be a Marxist". 

Yes the HDV is well underway. Stopping it is slamming the brakes on as your car heads towards the cliff edge. Or in a similar way deciding that when the block you live in has dry rot, subsidence and pharoah ants, it's not advisable to sit tight and do nothing to "move forward".
Scrapping the HDV is nothing to do with dogma. It's based on nine months hard work and evidence gathering by the Council's own Scrutiny Committee which strongly suggested that the model proposed is high risk. Risky practically, financially and socially. Have you read its reports, TimP?

(Declaration of Interest: my wife Cllr Zena Brabazon was and remains one of the Scrutiny Panel. So by the way, was Cllr Tim Gallagher. He seems to have changed his mind or disagreed with the panel and never said. The panel's original report was unanimous.

By the way, the Shelter article - by one person - was strongly challenged. In my view they were wrong and misinformed. But even so the article was considerably more nuanced and balanced than  your two words "indicating merit". (Have you read it or just been told about it?) Shelter also claims to be non-political. In this instance they unwisely jumped deep into a political issue.

I am not an "SWP type" - whatever that phrase means. I've been a Labour member since the 1970s. (I tried to join before when I lived in South London but they never cashed my cheque.)

As it says behind the new sculpture of George Orwell: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".  I refuse to be told who I can or can't talk to, or read, or write for, which websites I view, or which meetings I attend.

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Permalink Reply by TimP on December 5, 2017 at 15:05

I was surprised at how defensive the response was. 

And my call for independent review and analysis dismissed whereas most open minded people would support. And the one pro homeless independent voice, shelter, also attacked and dismissed.

I hope this isn't illustrative of what an oppositionalist council will look like.  Long on words and protest, short on action..

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on December 5, 2017 at 15:27

dftt

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on December 5, 2017 at 15:19

An informative reply not to your taste Mr Anon? 
Nobody including me has dismissed independent review and analysis. But it's little comfort when someone's home is a pile of rubble to discover that the analysis shows that demolition was a bad idea.

Actually small pilot projects enable such review. Provided that the residents involved have full and comprehensive information about what's happening and know and agree.

There are some small projects which the Scrutiny Panel looked at or discussed with other councils. And that might be a sensible way to go. What's not sensible is to have the "big bang" approach with contracts signed covering a huge area.

Getting it wrong small scale may be retrievable. A largescale disaster?

Well, would you be happy if you and your family were the experimental guinea pigs? And - as in the this case. there were many hundreds of yellow secret pages in the deal which you, your neighbours and not even your lawyers were allowed to see?

Anyway please do tell us who you are and what your personal interest is.

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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on December 5, 2017 at 16:45

Tim, I wish people wouldn't join HoL and just jump in ignorant of previous discussions where solutions to opposition to the HDV have been offered, solutions different from the HDV have been offered, criticism of the method behind the HDV has been offered and agreed with by a wide majority and then feel surprised that we're getting a bit fedup fending this stuff off.

As for bringing Shelter into it, I think they were taken over a while ago by property developers. See the connection to Grenfell?

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Permalink Reply by TimP on December 5, 2017 at 18:44

Well you could do a thread to previous debate. And welcome new voices. Or alternatively carry on with a boring little clique communicatiing with each other......

Permalink Reply by John McMullan on December 5, 2017 at 18:55

Pam hasn't been tagging them all so I admit it's hard for you but this is a neighbourhood website, clique is a badge I wear with honour so feel free to say hi if you see me around.

Running total 1.

Running total 2.

Running total 3.

Running total 4.

And this, and this, and this. You could just even click on "local democracy and politics" at the top of this discussion.

And if you want to see why we're all so vexed and fedup: here.

Permalink Reply by John McMullan on December 5, 2017 at 19:48

Do keep up Billy. It's been something I've been aware of since before then though. St Mungos are a much better bet.

Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on December 7, 2017 at 21:35

"I refuse to be told who I can or can't talk to, or read, or write for, which websites I view, or which meetings I attend."

People have been prosecuted for posting on Facebook, Alan -remember the Twitter Joke Trial?". The Tory defence secretary is calling for a kill list.

Your lovely wish Is no longer true, if it ever was (that people can say and do what they like in public). There's a long list of things you're not allowed to do - hate speech for instance.  Or maybe on this site, criticising a Labour Party selection process, as John did so gallantly?

Whatever you might think of yourself, maybe Rousseau called it:"man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains".

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Permalink Reply by 2eapisg6lxq2e on December 5, 2017 at 13:21

if the council did nothing instead of the HDV those on the councils waiting lists, those suffering the most because of the shortage in council housing, would be enormously better off than if the HDV went ahead. 

so a better plan is to do nothing , if your working class . An even better plan than that is to build more council housing as Islington has.

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Permalink Reply by Philip Rose on December 5, 2017 at 15:06

Thank you for your post TimP. Please allow me to answer each of the points in order. The council has no mandate on the hDV. This was never part of the manifesto in 2014, and as mandates are drawn from manifesto commitments, there clearly in no mandate.

However what was in the manifesto, was a commitment to build 250 Council homes. This the council has comprehensively failed at. However Part of the HDV is to demolish over 1000 coucil homes which will be replaced with none. It would seem that to demolish 1000 council homes is a fundamental breach of their manifesto commitment. Consequently the mandate the council has is to stop the HDV.

You say they HDV will provide a lot new housing and indeed it will. None of it will be Council Housing and very little, if any, will be social housing. Alan Strickland has been remarkably reticent to say how much, if any, social housing will be provided. It is true that the council have said there will be 40% affordable housing, but this will be at a proportion of market rents which make them anything but affordable. Even then any affordable housing will be subject to viability.

This is an old trick by property developers including Lend Lease. They say x% affrodable rents subject to viability and lo and behold the viability in almost every case turns out to mean a much smaller number of affordable housing. In addition Alan Strickland has confirmed that any affordable housing will have poor doors. Poor doors are entrances around the back, by the bins, for the poor people to enter, away from the nice entrances with potted plants and carpets for the wealthier majority.

And majority they will be. even by the best estimates 60% of the new properties will be non subsidised luxury housing. The effect of this will be to transform the area, precisely as the council wishes. To transform it to a rich area with expensive shops, bars and cafes. This will force out the existing poorer residents of tottenham effectively socially cleansing Tottenham.

None of this provides any housing to house people from the waiting list on. The only way people on the housing list will be taken off is when they are housed in areas and communities away from haringey.

How any member of the labour party could feel a labour administration has or could get a mandate on this is beyond me as a labour party member. But then its clearly been shown in the last few weeks, the vast majority of membership of the labour party are appalled by the HDV. For the record I have never been a member of any party other than the labour party.

We do have alternative plans. some have been laid out before, such as what enfield are proposing (a wholly owned vehicle),  some are being worked on. even then doing nothing would be preferable to the devastation the HDV will wreak upon Haringey residents lives. 

Whatever alternatives are put forward will be fully discussed and consulted upon with the residents and tenants affected, before implementing them. That alone would be better than the mess the existing Labour Group has created.

None of this is geture politics. Gesture politics is making off hand gestures and comments without any evidence to back it up, or trying to build up your argument by name calling and implying membership of certain political parties means you cannot have a right to hold an opinion on what happens in your area. A bit too McCarthyite for me.  Hmmm now where have I seen that recently?

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