Cameron blog roundup
May 9th, 2015
This collection of links appears to have caused something of a minor flurry of interest, at least in proportion to the hits my blog normally gets. A few weeks ago I had a clear out of minor and link based articles from a few years ago which had Cameron’s name in and seemed irrelevant. Thanks to Google cache I’ve recovered them so for what it’s worth here they are in short order.
Cameron again, the right wing twit
November 12th, 2010
If you hadn’t noticed already, these are strange, tumultuous times. We are still in the midst of the uneasy period of phoney war before the cuts actually bite, but we now know what’s coming: the deepest and quickest reductions in public spending since the 1920s which, according to an under-reported quote from David Cameron, will not be reversed, even when our economic circumstances improve (2 August, at an event in Birmingham: “Should we cut things now and go back later and try and restore them later? I think we should be trying to avoid that approach”).
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/spending-cuts-fightback-begins
p.s. the title didn’t say “twit”originally 🙂
No free University under the ConDems
November 11th, 2010
In a round of interviews in Seoul, where he is attending the G20 summit, Cameron said: “We won’t go back. Look, even if we wanted to, we shouldn’t go back to the idea that university is free.”
https://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/11/nick-clegg-careful-tuition-fees-pledge
Is there anything we don’t know about the Tory intentions? Restrained as they may have been under the Coalition (were they?) with the fiercely left wing LimpDems to hold them to account (joke), now unfettered they are free to exercise their wildest C19th dreams with all but a return to slavery, children down mines and up chimneys, only because most of the mines are closed or open cast and many houses no longer have chimneys.
As to housing which is the putative reason for the existence of this blog we can forget our dreams of a return to 1950s mass house building, architects departments, direct labour organisations, properly funded local councils, municipal dreams, civic pride, the power of the town hall.
When they talk about decentralisation and handing power back to the regions (without the necessary funding by the way) they mean allowing areas that benefit from wealthy inhabitants to prosper at the expense of those without, with less and less taxation for cross subsidy.
Expect to see more Jaywicks, more Easingtons, more rough sleepers, especially among the 16 to 21 age group. Less social housing built, more regeneration resulting in gentrification, even less council housing under the control of local authorities, more right to buy. The minimum wage falling behind, no desire to roll out the living wage more widely, more punitive sanctions on the unemployed, more “workfare” and no repeal of the bedroom tax. In fact others have suggested in comments I’ve linked to that the bedroom tax was designed to end council housing by freeing up the larger houses which can then be sold off thus reducing the national housing stock still further.
I don’t know whether the Tories can afford to carry out their threat to allow right to buy for Housing Association tenants (not customers for crying out loud).
But I do know that if they build these 200,000 starter homes they talked about before the election, they will not conform to any minimum space standards or ceiling heights other than those imposed by local authorities with the sense to reign in local developers.
“If the public are willing to buy them, then we are willing to build them” the cry will go up.
That’s my Sunday morning rant over. I hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday secure in the knowledge that those of us on what used to be called “The Left” are about to face another five years of watching the Post War settlement being dismantled before our eyes with all that that implies and a return in some areas of our own country to the poverty of the 1930s.
If you can, I’d emigrate even if only North of the border where they still know what compassion and equality mean, which is why they firmly rejected Labour’s failure to have the courage of their convictions and fight the Tories instead of walking in their footsteps.
p.s. Just seen this on Twitter. Pretty much sums it up #ToriesOutNow
