Single Aspect Blog

“Thatcher used a carrot to encourage the better off tenants to buy their council homes and Cameron is using a stick, his Bedroom Tax, to destroy the remaining tenancies.”

It’s difficult to read the observations of the Guardian commentator I quote below without concluding that nothing has changed. Now it’s worse because then they were planning it but now appear to be implementing it.

Half the families hit by bedroom tax ‘now in debt’

The weaknesses of the Speenhamland system was exploited by ruthless inhumane 19th Century politicians in order to introduce their real agenda: the Workhouse system.

Now we see the same ruthless mindset in the Coalition’s housing policy. The Bedroom Tax has an agenda. You won’t hear any politicians talking about it or media commentators. Their agenda is to destroy the Council House system and they are doing it by stealth.

As Thatcher sold off public institutions this government are looking for assets to strip too. They see Council Housing as a vast untapped public asset that they can sell off.

Thatcher did it by selling it to the wealthiest tenants. This government are doing it by engineering the mass eviction of the remaining council house tenants.

They laid their plans and now the rent arrears are accumulating just as the government knew they would. Earlier in this parliament the government quietly introduced new rules for new council house tenants.

All new tenants will be required to pay up to 80% of the rate of local private rents for their council properties.

They introduced this by insisting that it wouldn’t affect any existing tenants. But at that point they hadn’t revealed their next plan to drive existing tenants into debt so that they would eventually be able to evict them.

We are witnessing a deliberate policy of pauperising the most vulnerable. But it isn’t just because this government is heartless and cruel. The real secret agenda is to sell off those people’s homes.

You will notice that this government is also intent on boosting another property bubble despite all the warnings from economists. This government invented their Bedroom Tax as a ruse.

This is the most ruthless piece of social engineering of any Tory government. Cameron said “We will finish of Margaret Thatcher’s revolution”. Clegg agrees with him.

The removal of all social housing is their goal. Their greedy eyes are fixed on tenants homes.

https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27142569

The bedroom tax: echoes of the poll tax

I don’t think it was incompetence that made them introduce the Bedroom Tax. They have a much bigger agenda which isn’t getting any media coverage.

Early on in this parliament they quietly slipped through a bill that allowed councils to increase council rents up to 80% of the amount charged by private landlords for all NEW council tenancies.

That huge increase in rent effectively prices council housing out of the reach of the very people who need it most.
In the first phase of their attack on council housing the government deliberately aimed this massive rent increase at new tenancies only.

But now they have revealed the sting in the tail with their Bedroom Tax. It is deliberately designed to push existing tenants into rent arrears. Already, just three months into the scheme up to half those affected are in rent arrears.

The government know that they just have to wait and the time will come when thousands of families across the country will be evicted from their homes as a direct result of their policy.

I would suggest that that is exactly what the government intended to happen and their Bedroom Tax was designed precisely for that purpose and no other.

If any of those families do manage to find alternative smaller accommodation they will be taking out new tenancies for their new homes and as a result their rent will massively increase. They won’t be able to afford it.

But what will happen to those empty council properties once the existing tenants have been forced out? The government will encourage councils to sell them off.

The government will have stripped this country of one of it’s last big public assets: it’s remaining council housing stock. It will have privatised council housing by stealth.

Thatcher used a carrot to encourage the better off tenants to buy their council homes and Cameron is using a stick, his Bedroom Tax, to destroy the remaining tenancies.

That is why they introduced their Bedroom Tax. It was no accident.

https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27293016

From the Guardian:-

Bedroom tax Westminster Council defeat

From Inside Housing on Right to Buy

“A Labour government will not repeal the right to buy, Jack Dromey has confirmed.”

From the comments:-

Judith Martin | 26/09/2013 12:15 pm

I have some slight sympathy with Dromey over this. Imagine the headlines in the Sun and the rest of the Tory-supporting gutter press that nonetheless has millions of working class readers.

But I’ve never been able to see how, if you want to build social housing and then allow it to be bought at a discount, the country’s housing needs can ever be met.

What I hope Dromey and the Eds will do when the time comes is slash the discount and return the receipts to LAs to build with.

Links

Tom Slater on the Bedroom Tax

https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/tslater/bedroomtax.html

Stefano Picascia of Manchester Metropolitan University

https://cfpm.org/~stefano/4/manchester-london-morphing