Selling off the family silver
March 29th, 2012
How can you market a monopoly product like water, electricity, gas and the railways? A few short years before his death Harold MacMillan called Thatcher’s behaviour “selling off the family silver.” Had it achieved anything useful there might be something to celebrate. All we have now is a campaign to bring the “big six” to heel for overcharging and less reliable supplies than we had in the 1970s, three day week excepted.
Here’s an account of supply problems from somebody in the business who clearly has a good grasp of what’s gone wrong since the 1970s and how close we have come to power cuts.
First one (in recent years) was 10th December 2002. We were some 2-3 minutes from initiating load shedding (rolling blackouts). I don’t know the cause — most likely a cold spell causing a shortage of gas so that commercial consumers on cheap gas tarrifs have their gas cut off, some of whom were gas fired power stations, so we lose electricity generation capacity at peak heating demand.
Cameron and the Police
March 3rd, 2012
There seems no end to the lengths this bunch of millionaire muppets will go to sell the family silver, well what’s left, but this really must be a bridge too far. The Guardian article that appeared yesterday has so far attracted over 2000 comments, a rare event even for the frantic bloggers from both sides of the Atlantic who keep an eye on such things. I’ve read most of them, of which the vast majority are bitterly against, and angry. This [edited] one below pretty much sums up how I feel about it all and if you want to look up my two short contributions they’re under Piecesofeight
3 March 2012 7:15PM
I’m outraged and shocked by it all naturally. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that Cameron is on a mission to make sure the Conservatives are never a palatable voting option for an entire generation and he’s doing a brilliant job at it.
Squatters – Tanya Gold – Guardian
February 21st, 2012
I know that in the 1970s squatting was popular. I’ve got a book on my shelves entitled Alternative London which tells you how to get up to all manner of things to do with accommodation of dubious legality but those times are past. Owing to comprehensive redevelopment and “twilight areas” rows of perfectly good houses were being emptied by thoughtless councils intent on demolition and with new build council housing not keeping up the result was, perhaps, coupled with the lassez faire attitude of the times, inevitable.
The Realities of Housing in the ‘Big Society’ – Corporate Watch
February 14th, 2012
Reproduced with kind permission of Corporate Watch
On 21 November 2011 the ConDems finally unveiled their so-called ‘Housing Strategy for England’ with the fingerprints of free market think tanks all over it. According to the Coalition, the housing crisis is really the crisis facing aspiring home owners and those who want to move to where new jobs are being created, which is in turn blamed on the state’s stranglehold on house building from the “central planning, top-down targets and bureaucratic structures” of the previous Labour government.
The solution is thus simple – liberate the housing market from these obstacles and Adam Smith’s famous invisible hand of competition will work its magic. But of course we’ve seen and heard it all before and we know only too well what freeing the market really means: a new round of public bailouts for the big corporate banks and builders, pushing more people into a lifetime of debt just for the illusion of home ownership and a new wave of housing privatisation.
Rebuilding Britain for the Baby Boomers
November 26th, 2011
Maxwell Hutchinson analyses the rebuilding of post-war Britain through unique and exclusive archive interviews on the 50th anniversary of the emblematic Parkhill Flats.
An excellent programme from the series Archive on 4 of which the history of Park Hill flats in Sheffield formed the backbone, while finding time to branch off and talk about Robin Hood Gardens in East London, and the World’s End Chelsea, all against a background of the whole post war reconstruction effort.
Hammersmith & Fulham council – Great lies of our time
November 25th, 2011
Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council today welcomes the return of Right to Buy, but says that local authorities should have the freedom to be able to retain all of the proceeds from the scheme so that they can build more affordable homes.
https://www.lbhf.gov.uk/Directory/News/Councils_should_retain_all_the_proceeds_from_Right_to_Buy.asp
Next week on the evening of November 30th there will be a planning meeting https://www.saveourskyline.co.uk/index.php for a scheme that will include NO affordable homes.
“The right to buy council homes remains iniquitous”
November 23rd, 2011
I do love my readers. So often somebody will type something into Google which sums up the situation better than I have so far and either leads me on to new knowledge or summarises a situation very well. Such is the above (from Norwich I think). If it was you, thank you and I hope you enjoyed reading through the long exchange between myself and Mizzentop the other day at https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=9450
Guardian housing articles
November 22nd, 2011
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject.
The Guardian has a couple of good articles on housing today with the usual range of comments from which I’m picking out a few. Rob Williams has been good enough to link to my pages on the Parker Morris tables which has pulled in a few hits.
How would you like to live in a hobbit home, Grant Shapps?
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/22/grant-shapps-new-build-homes
Council Housing RIP
November 19th, 2011
Millions of council tenants would be allowed to buy their homes at half price under government plans to extend the right-to-buy. The discount, double that currently available, is part of the government’s long-awaited, and much delayed, housing strategy paper, due to be published on Monday.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/19/council-tenants-buy-half-price
Of course it remains to be seen if they actually implement this, if those council tenants so entitled can afford to buy, even with the discount, but clearly Cameron and Co. are determined to finish what the Iron Lady could not.
Guardian comments – right to buy
November 18th, 2011
UPDATE: 29/9/13 Oh bollocks, I was trolled. I’ve just seen this exchange on a completely different article:-
Good luck with your trolling attempts, Mizzentop / RJM1968 / BusinessLeader. Don’t work too hard – the champagne bar in the Midland Hotel will be opening soon.
https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27455358
Taken from:-
Austerity protesters outnumber Conservative delegates conference
I wish I’d spotted him first then I wouldn’t have wasted all that effort debating a troll. I’ll leave the rest here for you to amuse yourself with.
November 18th 2011
I’ve spent the day bashing seven bells out of the keyboard in support of council housing and against RTB in a discussion on the Guardian website with a gentleman from South Wales.
I’m Piecesofeight.
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16 November 2011 8:26PM
Thatcher was guilty of the greatest sin in my book of selling off council houses. She caused the housing crisis we have now and for that I could never forgive her.
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