Three Streets in the Country – Michael Frayn
November 3rd, 2012
This film formed part two of the five day series Where We Live Now, in the week beginning Monday 19th February 1979. I was lucky enough to see it at Kings College London on Friday 12th February 2010.
Woodberry Down – Koos Couvée
November 2nd, 2012
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicohogg/164474440/sizes/m/in/set-72157600403732490/
Woodberry Down has slipped under my radar in the sense that despite having lived just up the road for over a year, at Stamford Hill, in the 1970s, I have never walked around it or given it much thought. However, a recent article that came to my notice this week is above average and a wonderful description of the goings on there so I think it deserves a mention here.
Anna Minton – Four Thought – Radio Four
November 1st, 2012
“It became clear to me that high security was especially a feature of very poor and very wealthy areas, a visual marker and reflection in the landscape of our sharply widening inequality.”
Still available here -> FourThought.mp3 <- Right click and Save As.
Of here if the BBC drop it -> FourThought.mp3 <- Right click and Save As.
Here’s Anna Minton writing in the Guardian on the day before her Radio 4 talk:-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/30/cctv-increases-peoples-sense-anxiety
Will Hutton put forward a similar point of view in an article about fairness for the Observer in September 2010.
“Ever more sophisticated CCTV policing the fortresses of the rich and the desolate housing estates of the disadvantaged has become the iconic social intervention of the age.”
https://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/26/them-and-us-will-hutton
#UCLStratford – Saving Carpenters Estate – 31st Oct 2012
November 1st, 2012
UPDATE: Keep an eye on future events UCLUSAVECARPENTERS
Last night I had the pleasure of attending a talk organised by the UCL Student Union about the future of the Carpenters Estate in Stratford, East London. By the start time of 1800 the lecture theatre was more or less full. Present were a majority of students, a few lecturers and three members of UCL management on the front row (including Andrew Grainger, Director, UCL Estates) both to see what they were up against (of which more later) and to answer the inevitable questions.
A write up by Michael Edwards is available here:-
https://michaeledwards.org.uk/?p=1135
and my own notes from the evening are available below.
Beds in sheds go legal
October 25th, 2012
UPDATE: Landlords solution to housing shortage live in a garage
Click photo for article (subscription required)
“Temporary structures that add low-cost housing to existing east London estates judged top in Building Trust International competition. Levitt Bernstein has defeated an 85-strong short list in the international contest to design low-cost, single-occupancy housing for urban areas. The studio’s winning proposal uses temporary structures to occupy redundant garages on housing estates in east London.”
BBC Archive – London
October 7th, 2012
This weekend I discovered some old films about London on the BBC website, and have been enjoying a look back to the 1950s and 60s. In case you enjoy this sort of thing too I’m posting this brief article to alert you to the fact that you can be reminded of childhood memories or find out what it looked like in our parents time and how London has changed since.
William Waldegrave and the 1988 Housing Act
October 4th, 2012
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject (or here) and Part 1 here or slow link here.
This is not so much an article so much as more a collection of comments but it tells the story of a man, his decision and its outcome. None of it makes pleasant reading. It’s time to reduce the Housing Benefit bill not by moving families out of London to the sticks but by starting a process of restoring capital grants for low cost housing and actually building places for people to live instead of shuffling families around the country like so much livestock.
This year there has been a dramatic surge in the number of families being housed in B&Bs, with figures from the National Housing Federationshowing a 44% increase over the past year. For families with children, the rise has been even sharper – an increase of 60%, according to the homelessness charity Shelter. Almost 4,000 families are now living in hostels, and the most dramatic rise is in central London.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/15/bed-and-breakfast-families-crisis
Subsidy – misuse of the word
October 2nd, 2012
One of the words used by right wing politicians with no interest in housing anyone who can’t afford to buy a house or pay ever increasing private rent, is the word subsidy. It is almost always used in a perjorative way to suggest that the supposed beneficiary is in receipt of some favour, advantage, or benefit bestowed upon them by a benevolent society when there is no such thing as a subsidy being granted, only misuse of the word.
Right to Buy 2.0 by David Davis and Frank Field January 2012
September 28th, 2012
Right to Buy 2.0 by David Davis and Frank Field January 2012
This briefing written by Frank Field and David Davis is a poor and ill considered response to the crying need for housing in this small country of ours, England. Scotland and Wales have their own solutions. England deserves better than this mean spirited and narrow minded set of suggested policies to the lack of housing for those unable to afford to buy a house.
My strongest criticism of the briefing is that it lacks objectivity, it does not start from a level playing field, it is written from a point of view that takes several right wing prejudices as gospel and then attempts to find a solution to the housing problem based on these prejudices.
Right to buy – Frank Field vs Keren Suchecki
September 22nd, 2012
UPDATE: 11/10/17 This article summarises my position. The housing crisis will only get worse until England scraps right to buy