Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Not voting Labour as a result of Johns investigations?
As a life long Labour supporter I have decided not to vote Labour for the next local elections. I am not a St Ann's resident but as result of John's investigations I do feel that the local party is rotten to the core and not worthy of my vote.
I am wondering if any others are going to follow suit? and if so who will you be voting for. Me? I'm undecided.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Apart from the obvious foreign ownership issue of lack of occupancy the bigger one for me is the unfairness, even to wealthy Londoners. Bear with me.
When Gordon Brown introduced the SIPP be specifically forbade people using these pension funds to buy residential property, fearing a property bubble. Unfortunately all of us saving in England have had to sit by, unable to do a thing, as foreigners from low tax denominations have hoovered up London property with THEIR pension funds.
Not only that but disingenuous companies like Berekely Group sell these properties in Hong Kong and Singapore before they put them on sale in London. Why do I say disingenuous? Because they tell the government that they go on sale at the same time, but people in China are many hours ahead of us so even if you walk in at 9am on the day they go on sale, all the good apartments are gone.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Thanks for that link, Dave. Although you won't be surprised to hear that in my 15½ years as a Haringey councillor, I can't recall a single occasion when our planning and regeneration staff wrote a report or outlined these underlying forces in the housing/land market and how they impact on Haringey's particular problems. Nor can I remember any of these professional "experts" mentioning that there is some helpful academic writing which tries to explain what's happening in London and other cities. Of course I may not have been at those particular informative meerings.
In the Guardian article you flagged-up, I found the most chilling paragraph quoted an estate agent whose own home is in Hackney. She paid £170,000 for it in 1986. In 2007 it was worth £1.2m. And now?
"Well we're just having some work done on it, and when it's finished I think it'll be worth around £2.4m-£2.5m, so that's actually a 100% rise. But it's a very specific product."
So it's not a home, it's a "product".
Which is the same terminology I heard used by Lyn Garner, Haringey's Environment Director at a meeting with small businesses in North Tottenham. This is exactly what I wrote down:
"There has been no determination of what the uplift of housing will be. At the moment we're looking at a number of options around the potential for some of it to be private for sale; for a proportion to be private for renting; and for a proportion to be what we're calling a subsidised rent product."
This is supposed to be a Labour council?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Permalink Reply by Mark Smith on
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Vote Green. It's the only vote that isn't wasted even if your candidate doesn't have any chance of winning, as the size of the Green vote nationally will influence the policies of the major parties who want to get their hands on those votes.
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Permalink Reply by gilly on
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As a working class person I would not want to vote for the Green party as it still is run mostly with middle class people , don't get me wrong, indeed i did vote one green in my last vote. I haven't got a huge chip against middle class people, most of my friends are, its just what is important to one set of people in different circumstances is different from the other, I know this is a very small statement there are many angles. I am staunch green in many ways, a member of sustainable haringey, trying to grow my own, have been involved with Food from the Sky, and Embercombe, did the journey there, fantastic place, but perhaps because of this recognise my limitations.
I prefer the route to fight to change the system that does not work a la Russell Brand.... I posted the petiton to offer the None of the above and would prefer to encourage those in the working classes both young and old to confront the understandable apathy in it all and get out and vote to change the system that does not include them. In fact I think I will try and encourage my daughter to go on a mission to get the teens she knows to spread the word! Guess that is the best i can do for now, It is important to take action otherwise I become very despondant!
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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One of my theories is to vote for lib dems just to see if we can get the labour party out. Hopefully resulting in the labour party having a good long think about what they have done and changing their ways in time for the next election. Sadly i doubt that will happen but they have certainly lost my vote . come on some other party, embrace me!
Actually I am somewhat disheartened by the lack of voice from the othere parties on this subject.
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The other parties do not want to be accused of making political capital out of this. I for one do not want a hysterical yellow gang, red gang slanging match. I prefer the sound of my own voice ;)
One option, which is gaining traction on Twitter, is to campaign in Seven Sisters and Noel Park to get Alan Strickland, Claire Kober and possibly even Joe Goldberg kicked out. I will say this again, it's only a thousand votes and do they really have the stomach for it after taking this kicking?
However I think there are still some great people in the Labour Party locally and I have offered to drop leaflets for a friend standing in Alexandra Ward, currently held by the libdems. Getting rid of Claire and Alan is achievable, getting the Labour Party out is not.
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Yes John, agreed, but their silence makes me equally suspicious.
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None-of-the-above is not the problem. The problem is that YOU did not stand. Had you joined the Labour party and put yourself forward in Harringay you may well have been selected. And the rest of the problem is the people who are NOT voting.
We need to ALL vote and we need to not just vote for a party but look at the candidates. What happened in Haringey's Labour Party selection meetings is that there was a definite bias to choose right wing candidates knowing that people would just vote for them because they were Labour and hence the left wing choice. Do you think left wing Labour councillors would be pushing through the Tottenham regeneration stuff in this way?
I think the Russell Brand argument is lazy at best and dangerous at worst. There is miles of difference between the Labour Party and the Tories. Anyone who can't see that is just looking at the faces on TV.
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I fundamentally agree with Russell Brand; the last time I voted for a mainstream party was at the 1992 General Election, for exactly the same reasons that Mr Brand doesn't vote at all. In the absence of any other choices, however, I've chosen to vote Green on the basis that to be able to change the planet, we also have to save it.
I do support giving people the option to vote for 'None of the above' though, and if it was available I would seriously consider taking it, but until then the Greens will have my vote.
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You're missing my point, it's not about the "failure" of your vote (although I get that) it's the fact that so many others who feel the same way as you could not even be bothered to tell a canvasser that they would vote, let alone go to the polling station.
I hope people understand that their vote is so worthless because of everyone else not voting or voting blindly for a favourite colour. Look at the fawning the politicians are forced to do in marginal constituencies.
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I was replying to Gilly's post, and hadn't read yours, but I take your point. The problem for me is that if the Labour Party are selecting right wing candidates, who do I vote for? If there's a worthy left wing independent I'd consider it.
Thinking more about the 'None of the above' option I can see a problem. A large protest vote could put pressure on the major parties to change in order to win these votes in future, but it doesn't have any context. How would anybody know why these people had chosen not to vote for any of the candidates, so how would they know what changes these people wanted to see? Opinion polls maybe.
Maybe all the disparate left wing factions should unite and form a new party.
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