Saturday 14 July 2007



Following Waking Hereward's post ‘The relentless ruination of England’ (via Witanagemot) which reported on Sauron’s housing policy, I would also suggest that the motives should be looked at through a party political prism.
Todays ‘Gruniaid’ reports on confidential documents that commit the party to allow councils to build homes for the first time since 1997.
Some of the items of particular note are;

‘Ministers are looking at new restrictions on the " right to buy" discounts given to tenants who buy the new homes’.

Back to the 1970’s Social Housing Nirvana then. Owning one’s own home is surely the single most important way of the Subject / Citizen (according to your own lights) having a stake in the ownership of the society that they live in. It allows you to pass the accumulation of all your efforts in life to your children (assuming that they don’t get you through IHT!). To potentially take this freedom away from those who have the most to gain from becoming more self reliant is sickening. It’s really part of the ‘Give a man a spade’ argument. Unless of course Sauron wants as many people as possible to be beholden to the state – I can’t believe that for one moment!

‘Ministers will insist on a number of safeguards to prevent a waste of taxpayers' cash. These will restrict the right to restart major house-building programmes to councils with good housing management records and also give priority to councils which can either sell or use surplus land in inner cities'.

And who holds most ‘Inner City’ Constituencies and who has the most to gain politically? Also who will scrutinise the passing or failing against the Criteria set by any particular Council? The Minister one assumes. More heat maps, more persuing of partisan objectives at the possible detriment of genuine need.

‘The councils likely to benefit are among the 100 or so authorities where tenants have won ballots against the transfer of their homes to private landlords and housing associations’

I haven’t been able to find the definitive list of the ‘100’. However having undertaken an Interweb search it would seem that the vast majority of ‘lost’ votes on transfers seems to be in Nude Labia areas – If someone has a list please let me know and I will undertake further analysis.

‘The communities minister, Hazel Blears, has conceded that the need for new homes must take priority over environmental concerns and said she could not given "categoric assurances" about redrawing the green belt’.

So the bulldozers are coming out are they?. No votes to be lost there.


I have been blathering on about the politicising of the NHS for factional gain for ages but one could draw the conclusion that as a result of the ‘Queen’s Speech’ Housing policy is now to be used in the same manner.

2 comments:

James Higham said...

I was reading down through this and didn't know what to think, then cme upon:

The communities minister, Hazel Blears

No need to read any further. End of story. Chippie of the Golden Touch.

CFD Ed said...

Watch out if there is large building of council housing. Forget about Westminster Council’s ‘homes for votes’ scandal. Before that there was good old Harold Wilson’s council house building boom, in some areas that had previously not been Labour.

They never called it ‘homes for votes’ then and there was never an official scandal, because Harold and the boys were much more adept at the smoke filled room thing than Dame Shirley.