Iain Duncan Smith may come across as a bit condescending with his proposal to reward council tenants for good behaviour.
But the man who had to be removed because he was threatening to turn the 2005 Election into a proper contest, and who now gives interviews saying that he doesn’t care which party wins so long as certain policies are implemented, may well be onto something.
Unlike New Labour, he can at least see the difference between the people who might benefit from this scheme and the razor-wielding junkies on the game in whose interest the Government wishes to evict them, and whom the Government wishes to move in next door to them, by abolishing security of tenure.
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"razor wielding junkies on the game"
ReplyDeleteName three.
What, are you saying that such poeple do not exist?
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm sure the sets of "people who wield razors", "people on the game" and "people who are junkies" overlap at some point. What I'd like to see is some evidence of how many people we're talking about (hundreds? thousands? Could you fill a football stadium?). How many per council?
ReplyDeleteThen you could explain what the government gains from giving them houses.
You'd have to ask the Government itself that one.
ReplyDeleteIt clearly sees no difference whatever between the respectable working class and the real-life version of the characters from 'Shameless'.
So council tenants are to lose security of tenure (which, with subsidised rent, is the whole point of council housing) so that a law-abiding, tax-paying plumber and his family can be evicted in favour of - and the law-abiding, tax-paying electrician and his family next door can be delighted by the addition of - some clan or commune of, I say again, razor-wielding junkies on the game.
After all, they are all the same.
Aren't they?
Do you have any examples of respectable working-class people being evicted from council houses in order to accommodate razor-wielding junkies on the game?
ReplyDeleteThe council is filling up my estate with Shameless characters. My friends and relations all over the place are saying the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that anonymous might have.
ReplyDeleteAnd security of tenure is to be abolished specifically for that purpose.
The council is filling my estate up with Shameless characters too. But that's because I live on the estate on which Shameless is filmed. They all go away in the evenings.
ReplyDeleteThe plural of anecdote is not data!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the government's goal here?
Step 1 - evict deserving poor and replace with scum
Step 2 - ????
Step 3 - Profit
What's the big plan?
They don't have one, Den.
ReplyDeleteJames illustrates their mindset.
As do you, apparently unaware that this is even happening.
They would have to visit their constitunecies or wards to know it was happening. You may live in Lanchester but that's still Derwentside and still NW Durham. They live in Islington or somewhere and never leave except to go to the House or the other good watering holes in the West End.
ReplyDeleteCan you give us a rough estimate? What percentage of people now in council houses do you expect will be evicted to make room for slasher crack whores over the next year?
ReplyDeleteThere are two council estates even in leafy Lanchester, one just round the corner from me.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are more people here on benefits than the entire populations of certain neighbouring former pit villages, where by no means everyone is on benefits.
Anderson, we'll find out when security of tenure is abolished specifically for that purpose.
ReplyDeleteBetter, of course, would be not to abolish it. Then the figure would be, as it should be, none.
"You are too hard-working, well-behaved and aspirational to deserve a council house any more"? Seriously, that is what the Government is now saying!
"You are too hard-working, well-behaved and aspirational to deserve a council house any more"? Seriously, that is what the Government is now saying!
ReplyDeleteWhere are they saying this? Can you show us?
THey are planning to abolish security of tenure so as to evict people whom they don't think "need" a council house any more. In order to move in people whom they think do. And we all know who that means.
ReplyDeleteI don't know who that means.
ReplyDeleteIt means razor-wielding junkies on the game, the characters from Shameless.
ReplyDeletePeople who can't afford housing otherwise? But who aren't smacked-up streetwalkers flashing steel?
ReplyDeleteThe only people those running things think should be in council housing. The idea of it as a secure, subsidised springboard to skilled, tax-paying employment is completely lost on New Labour.
ReplyDeleteBut the characters from Shameless are fictional.
ReplyDeleteLet's worry about reality first, eh?
"People who can't afford housing otherwise"
ReplyDeleteThat's how the system already works. In that case, there'd be no need to change it.
We have a Political Class which despises social housing, and thinks of it only as somewhere to contain the dregs, out of view of anyone else. In this as in so many other ways, it is determined to prove its own point.
There are plenty of people like them, Ofinidia. Of course, you have never met any. But that doesn't mean that they don't exist.
ReplyDeleteIncredible, isn't it? Someone who really does believe that Shameless is as fictional as Star Trek. Why do you hate the hoi polloi so much Ofindia, if you do not believe that they really exist?
ReplyDeleteOfindia thinks that they and the respectable working class are the same thing. Should stand for Parliament, if not already there.
ReplyDeleteNuLab think council tenants are scum so moving in more scum next door won't make any difference. They are Thatcher's children.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot to read in to a short post. You might just as well say that I don't believe in Daily Mail boogeymen and I'm prepared to say that even people who've made mistakes in life shouldn't be left at the tender mercies of their dealer/pimp/razor-sharpener.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you do for razor-wielding junkies David?
Keep the respectable working class safe from them.
ReplyDeleteHow?
ReplyDeleteI notice Clive's not come back.
ReplyDeleteBut how would you help them?
ReplyDeleteI'm Clive!
ReplyDeleteRobert, proper policing and proper sentencing, mostly.
ReplyDeleteOfindia, getting them off drugs (not decriminalising them), getting them off the game (not decriminalising that, either), &c.
Not that all of them need or deserve "help", of course. Some of them deserve, and we all need them to receive, something else entirely.
So throw them in jail and leave them to rot?
ReplyDeleteNot much different from dumping them in sink-estates and ignoring them.
No, get them help. Although there are those who really should just be locked up, of course. But those who can be helped, should be.
ReplyDeleteThere is all the difference in the world between putting them on a law-abiding family's street and leaving them to get on with it, and putting them in prison.
"There is all the difference in the world between putting them on a law-abiding family's street and leaving them to get on with it, and putting them in prison."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, but you don't seem to be advocating either of these, so it's not clear why this fact is relevant.
And where will they live when they come out?
ReplyDeleteWell, they'll have served their sentences. If they do it again, then they'll go in for longer. If you know of a better solution, then I'd be by no means the only person who'd love to hear it.
ReplyDeleteThere are all sorts of ways of getting people off drugs or out of prostitution which, while decidedly on the tough side, are not prison.
But prison is where some people - of all classes and incomes - belong, of course, for the protection of the rest of us, of all classes and incomes.
So will they get a home the instant they come off the game?
ReplyDeleteHow happy will the "respectable" poor be to have an ex-crack whore as a neighbour?
You wouldn't be facetious if you'd ever seen these things.
ReplyDelete