Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Right to Buy
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The mess created by a previous generation of politicians is now falling to the young of this generation to clean up, as usual. 19 years ago, some of these hopeful candidates were still in primary school.
I was merely pointing out that in the case of Nora's pledge to fight HMOs, this is based on concrete work that she has done as part of David Lammy's office to support local activists who have done an amazing job of getting this issue taken seriously at the highest level and have dedicated a lot of their own time and energy to it and that as a result, it is a pledge that I can take seriously.
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- You’re clearly against right-to-buy. The policy liberated many working people and gave them a real steak in society. I get very sad to hear white middle-class home-owning people oppose RTB. Their attitude seems to be, "I can afford my own house, but you can't. Tough!”
As for Nora doing 'concrete work' - so she should! She's paid a handsome amount from the taxpayer, so can we give up on the idea that she is somewhere doing from the goodness of hertweetheart?
I’m sorry to break your Green/Lab/Lib Dem cosy consensus.
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- Oh Justin, you were one of those folk in Primary school when right to buy came in.
Come and have a look at the Rachmanism that occured on my Nan's council estate and then tell me that the Right to Buy scheme was a success.
What it did was remove housing stock into private landlords hands while not ensuring that new build replaced what was lost to absentee landlords and greedy profitering.
It was a politically motivated policy that destroyed many working class communities. Take a look at the Park View episode of Saving Britain's Heritage if you think this is some kind of lefty conspiracy theory.
There is no shame in living in council property, are you suggesting there is? For my parents and grandparents generation it was miles better than private landlords ripping you off -they all worked but they and their friends lived on the estates. By the time my brother came to want to live near his grandmother, the housing was gone and what was left in council hands has a waiting list as long as your arm. He of course is in the hands of private landlords after negative equity and the economic policies of the early 90s mean that he lost his little house that he tried to buy himself when he came out of work. I was around back then Justin and I do remember it well as does my grandmother who still lives in her council house and who rages against the Right to Buy Policy (she had the means to do it btw, she worked all her life) as the thing that killed her estate.
She is incidentally very proud of me, going throught the comprehensive system, going to university (first in the family) and becoming a teacher. Working class people eh? Nothing worse than the ones who use the system to secure a more secure life for themselves and their family. Don't you hate them? They're like reformed smokers.
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- It destroyed working class communities? Good! Thatcherism was about bettering oneself. As Mr Blair once said, "we're all middles class now". RTB helped make this possible.
My advice to your gran would be to buy the house, sell it (and hopefully make a profit) and move somewhere nicer.
Guess we're never going to agree on politics. That's why you're a lefty and I'm a righty.
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- Amazing how quickly you came up with this reply. It's as if you didn't have to think about it too much. In fact not a bit. Amazing.
See you at the drinks on Thursday night, expect a grilling on this.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by HoL Site Admin on
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And it continues:
Reply by Liz on March 16, 2010 at 11:44am
Good heavens Justin.
Are you sure you want to have published for the world to see "It destroyed working class communities? Good!"
I think my views Justin are based on experience, studying the history of community and identity and knowing that actually many estates are proud of their heritage and community, look up the fight that the Carpenters estate in Stratford is putting up; better still go and talk to RAs in the working class communities in your very own Tottenham and tell them to move somewhere nicer when they ask for your help to fight developers and HMO profiteers.
Yours seem to based on veneration for policies that even your own party are distancing themselves from now. So we know where you stand and so do your potential voters.
Does Mr Cameron know you are publishing this stuff to the world? I'm not sure he would be happy about you advising an 86 year woman to buy her council house, sell it on and move away from her home, family and community. Is this what you'll be saying to people in your surgeries if you are elected? Just move somewhere nicer?
Reply by Malcolm 1 hour ago
What on earth is good about destroying communities?
Is it that they're working class - well I suppose it would be possible to support the end of "class" as a distinction in British society, but surely not of work?
Or is it communities that you hate? In which case can I ask what you think you're doing here - and who you're talking to? HoL is a community, just as much as any estate.
And by the way, you might like to proof-read/spell check your posts so you don't appear to be someone who didn't learn much in the comprehensives you're so proud of attending. I don't know many people who have a "steak in society" apart from butchers.
Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe on March 16, 2010 at 11:53am
Hailing from a working class community (my mother is still a council tenant in N15) and having attended comprehensive schools, I think I know what I'm talking about. If anything, it will start up a lively discussion on the evils of socialism and I'll get many new canvass marks for my system (-:
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Permalink Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe on March 16, 2010 at 11:58am
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Conservatives support - more now than ever - RTB. We don't think the word 'profit' is a dirty word! Are you seriously suggesting that people over a certain age should be excluded from the many benefits of RTB? Who suggested your gran should move away from her family and friends (although this didn't seem to bother you)?
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on March 16, 2010 at 11:20am
The policy liberated many working people and gave them a real steak in the society
Sir Loin Hinchcliffe, as a former hard working vegetarian Westminster steakholder, what did the Maggie & Shirley right-to-buy policy ever do for my liberation?
Reply by Liz on March 16, 2010 at 12:09pm
@ Justin, How do you know it didn't bother me? or doesn't bother me still? However, as Norman T said, we had to get on our bikes and go where the work is.
Ah profit! Presumably you'll not have anything against people buying up properties, turning them into the rabbit hutches known as HMOs and renting their little slum heavens out for profit to the vulnerable and needy who can't get somewhere to live because of the massive housing shortage.
So now we have two of your personal policies:
If you have a problem with your neighbourhood, move somwhere nicer.
HMO landlords, your profit margins are safe with us.
I look forward to the Thursday debate in the pub Justin. I'll be the one wearing the Che Guevara T shirt and the red devils horns standing on a soapbox apparently
Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe on March 16, 2010 at 12:20pm
With profit should come responsibilities so, no, of course I don't support slums. Tenancy agreement make quiet clear the right and responsibilities of both tenant and landlord - the question is how best to enforce them.
And if you have a problem with your neighbourhood, try to do something about it. Realistically speaking, some people can't or won't and simply move on. We should judge them for that.
Reply by Tim Caines 1 day ago
I see nothing wrong with RTB either - one has to say that Justin is right in that people should have always have a mentality to better themselves. If Norman T gave you advice Liz as such that you desrcibe then he must have done you a favour as you seem to be doing OK.
Justin is, and I agree with him, saying that RTB essentially was a route out of poverty for some people, and that can't be a bad thing.
Reply by John McMullan 1 day ago
Yes Tim, better themselves fine. You're not talking about doing yoga and reading worthy fiction though, are you? You're talking about financial enrichment.
It was a route out of poverty? Wow... just because a person doesn't own the house they live in, doesn't make them impoverished. Impoverished is having nowhere to live and not being able to feed and clothe yourself or your family.
RTB was a mistake, as is evidenced by the current housing crisis. The government should be a big player in housing, it's a scarce resource.
Reply by DavidJ 18 hours ago
Is "Justin Hinchcliffe" actually a fictional character, created to remind us all about the dark days of Thatcherism?
"Vote Conservative - Destroy Working Class Communities" Its certainly got a ring to it.
Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe 13 hours ago
Snzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
Reply by Alison P 12 hours ago
This reminds me of an interesting piece in the Guardian a few weeks back, about Barking and the BNP. It made the following point about the Right to Buy and the impact it had on the housing market in that area:
"Margaret Thatcher's Right To Buy scheme changed things for ever, though only once former tenants sold up and moved on. As that happened, thousands of ex-council houses contributed to the cheapest rental market in London, drawing more and more of the economic migrants who now keep so much of the city running. The borough was thus transformed from a largely white community where abundant accommodation ensured that extended families lived within doors of each other, to a multi-coloured milieu in which people at the sharp end had to compete for scarce supplies of just about everything: decent jobs, adequate schools and, most of all, somewhere to live. The result: a tinderbox, where issues get reduced to race and nationality."
More here.
Reply by Michael Anderson 7 hours ago
Can I go back a bit on why Right to Buy is good. The money to build the properties was from national and local taxation. In other words you and I paid for these properties to be built. Then the tenant buys them at a huge discount, meaning that you and I have subsidised them (and before you say it, the rent they paid meant that they had free repairs and maintenance for the entire time they lived there). Is that really fair?
Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe 7 hours ago
Given you support the Communist regime in Cuba, I shouldn't think you do!
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Justin - why don't you just answer the question. If you are elected as a councillor will you give support to people taking away properties that were were paid for by people in the borough? And where will you put the thousands on the waiting list to be rehoused?
I can't really understand what Cuba has to do with your job as a (potential) elected member but you really must learn how to engage with your potential constituents.
Regards
Fidel
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Permalink Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe on
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Cuba? Because you contacted us to see if we would lift the American-imposed sanctions (if we said 'yes', would you then vote Tory? Doubt it vety much! So why bother?) If elected then I would continue to champion RTB, yes. That said, I'd want to make housing associations far more accountable and ensure private landlords complied with both the letter and spirit of the law (ditto their tenants).
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Justin - something has just occurred to me. I wrote to the prospective parliamentary candidate for Tottenham asking if she supported the lifting of sanctions against Cuba (which she does) and not to you. How is it that you know about this and do you think that there may be a Data Protection Act issue with you airing information about me that I did not supply to you or give you explicit permission to use?
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Is it not an infringement of the Data Protection Act to publish what the PPC candidate thinks? Or is this just trivial too ? :-)
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She replied in an letter to me and I am at liberty to let anyone know the contents of that letter. I did not write to Justin so I am a bit perplexed to understand -
1. How he knows the contents of a letter I wrote to someone else
2. Why he thinks that it is OK to let anyone else know in a public forum the contents of a private letter I sent to someone else
If the PPC had decided to release this information herself, that would be her decision and her right (just like I let others know what she said to me). Would you like it if you wrote to a someone and a complete stranger got hold of that letter and transmitted it publicly?
Frankly I don't really give a damn either way but as a prospective Councillor I think he has certain standards he should adhere to
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Fidel, are you a Labour Party member?
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Sorry for the delay - just back in London. No -I'm not a Labour party or any other party member.
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Justin - you still haven't told me how you know that I wrote to the prospective parliamentary candidate for Tottenham (i.e not you) and released the contents of the email without my permission. Some data protection issues don't you think?
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Permalink Reply by maggie on
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@Justin. Funnily enough your advice to broadly sell up, make a profit and move somewhere nicer was exactly the same advice given to me by the 'Rachman' who owns the house next door. (Four bedroom house turned into 8 family 'en suite' rooms and no bathroom). When I tackled him about making a modern slum he asked why I should want to live in such an awful area (the Ladder Roads) and why I didn't do the same as him and make an enormous profit so I could move somewhere nicer as he had done. He has certainly 'bettered' himself, at the expense of those living nearby, but then Thatcher didn't believe in society either.
The policy of selling off the council housing stock and the whole ethos of 'sell up, make a profit and move on' both in the council and private sector has meant that young people and others on low wages cannot get council accommodation, the price of buying is totally beyond their means and some end up living in dangerous rabbit hutches lining the pockets of unscrupulous landlords.
I'd like to add a thanks to Nora Mulready who has worked tirelessly on this issue and been very supportive.
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