Lynsey Hanley nails the Tories lies
November 30th, 2010
I thought this was a great article, and the comments that follow it. I don’t always agree with Lynsey Hanley but on this occasion she is spot on.
“That’s the paradox of conservatism: it celebrates the idea of individual freedom while making it incredibly difficult for some individuals – generally, those who lack power and money – to exercise that freedom.”
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/26/tory-paradox-free-less-choice
ArseneKnows
26 November 2010 10:34AM
The usual right wing bull from some of the usual suspects.
The 1834 Poor Law Reform Act is what they seem to be arguing for. In this act, signed nto law incidentally by Cameron’s ancestor William IV, the driving force behind the reforms was the concept of ‘less eligibility’. This basically meant that noone in receipt of relief from poverty should be as well off as even the lowest paid labourer.
Build more crap – Grant Shapps MP
November 26th, 2010
Cringleford Norwich – look at the size of the windows
As if “toy-town estates” on the edge of almost every UK town were not enough the coalition housing minister Grant Shapps wants the developers to continue in the same vein, unregulated. What else would you expect from the party that dropped the Parker Morris standards? Only Boris has housing standards at heart now and I’ll be interested to hear his London response to this latest unwanted intervention by a cabinet minister someone in charge of a portfolio not considered sufficiently important to warrant a seat in the cabinet.
In an article published in today’s online Architects’ Journal . . .
RIBA attacks government over housing standards u-turn
RIBA president Ruth Reed has voiced ‘serious concerns’ over the government’s decision to abandon the Homes and Communities Agency’s (HCA) core housing standards for all new publicly-backed homes
. . .
She added: ‘UK house builders have delivered the smallest homes in Europe, and have built homes which have been consistently judged to be of a poor quality by the Government’s own design watchdog. The Government should be putting the interests of communities first.’
Pathfinder – Owen Hatherley – Guardian
November 22nd, 2010
“Knocking stuff down does not increase supply, […] everything we knock down shrinks supply”
Prof Anne Power speaking to LB Camden
Pathfinder seems to have been in the news since the days of John Prescott and New Labour. Back in March this year, Karen Buck MP, a lady I respect, pointed out in a housing debate that. . .
. . . when the Pathfinder projects were starting they were dealing with the problem of excess supply and indeed many areas being blighted with huge numbers of homes that they could not rent or sell . . .
Pathfinder – Karen Buck blasts back March 4th, 2010 https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=86
I confess that I never did understand the true reason for it especially since it quickly resulted in groups of home owners banding together and taking their local council to court, and often winning, in order to avoid demolition.
At the height of the Pathfinder demolitions I can remember BBC news reports showing people saying that they were going to lose their homes with a compensation figure that would come nowhere near the cost of a new flat built to replace it.
Hammond Court in Waltham Forest – MAE llp
November 15th, 2010
Mae celebrates ‘overwhelming support’ for council housing scheme
15 November 2010 | By Ruth Bloomfield
Mæ has received planning consent for a new housing scheme on a troubled east London estate.
The scheme is for 43 new homes on Hammond Court in Waltham Forest, a 1970s estate rife with gang and drug problems.
The practice was awarded the scheme by housing group East Thames Group in 2007, but the project went on hold during the recession. It was revived earlier this year, and includes a terrace of three storey townhouses plus two blocks with a communal garden. The site is around half a hectare and the design of the new buildings mirrors the surrounding Warner Homes, built in the late 19th century as model family housing.
Alex Ely, partner at Mæ, said ‘We’re overwhelmed by the support the scheme received. It addresses many complex and pertinent issues of the moment: How to achieve good quality family housing at high density, how working with residents can help drive regeneration locally, and how we can respond to a historically sensitive context with contemporary architecture.’
Construction is due to start in summer 2011.
https://www.bdonline.co.uk/5009021.article
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The scheme is an estate regeneration replacing a series of unpopular 1970’s buildings. The units have been designed to the generous space standards of the East Thames Housing Design Guide, Lifetime Homes (July 2010 revision) and aim to achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4. Ten percent of units are designed for wheelchair users.
New Royal London Hospital – Yuk!
November 14th, 2010
What a mess. I don’t often take an instinctive dislike to a building but this thing is on such a gargantuan scale that you can’t ignore it, unfortunately, you have to have a view on it. It is out of scale with its surroundings to an alarming degree, ugly, with few windows and a most unattractive finish on the parts that aren’t blue panels.
Out of keeping, out of place, out of scale, I wish it was out of sight.
A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain – 22nd Nov
November 14th, 2010
Monday 22nd November
Owen Hatherly
In his provocative new book, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherly analyses the architecture of the neoliberal credit boom and discusses its merits with speakers including Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates.
Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall 7.45pm £7.50
Housing Benefit cuts – in a nutshell
November 1st, 2010
Allied against Osborne’s housing benefit cuts
Boris Johnson, Simon Hughes and Karen Buck – allies against housing benefit cuts. Photo of Hughes by Keith Edkins
The public have a way of bringing common sense and experience to complex issues and I have great faith in the ability of Joe Public to explain things in straightforward terms that anyone can understand. So it is with the housing benefit cuts and the hyperbole that has gone with it in recent days. I was out last night and happened to glance through the Independent letters page, the first of which sums up for me the whole history of the problem in a few paragraphs.