The Conservative Party is fishing in troubled waters by proposing new rights for tenants to buy houses and flats. It is a mistake to do this across the whole country, without regard to local needs and to the supply and demand for rented properties at affordable rents. This was why I rejected the Conservative Whip in the House of Lords in the early 1980s.
Many Local Authorities have transferred all their housing to voluntary Housing Associations. If these are caught by future legislation, the amount of re-lets becoming available for people in housing needs may be sharply reduced. The same will happen, where local Authorities retain their own properties.
A significant proportion of Housing Associations operate as registered charities. I think they will be safe from changes because they must consider the needs of current and future applicants to rent.
The Tories should think harder about Localism, which they tried to promote in one act of the last Parliament.
Time to get rooted down into this living Earth-1, beginning with a peacefully-revolutionary re-evaluation “across the board”:-
A. Biologically and Civilisationally-Technologically:
1. All Earth-1 Natural Lifesupports must be conserved
for however many millions of years it is likely to take to build and test the starships,
and to Nature-assistingly-‘evolve’ all the essential Lifesupports,
and to human-developmentally select and train all of the essential human-crew and the larger ‘Earth-2’ colonising-human-community for that “star-city” or “space-fleet”.
2. Strategicly ‘risk-wise’, that human-developmental-evolutionary Task should long ago have been peacefully-refounded, as
“one human being gets one human living”
and
” every-one does equal robust environmental duty as well as sedentary skilling”.
3. Since none of this can be achieved under the existing “individually-capitalistic ownership” adversary system;
and since house-ownership is both individually and socially imbalancing,
is unfair and unhealthy,
and is strongly critically instantiated by
(i) so many increasingly unpredictable “neighbours from Hell”, and
(ii) so many low-cost but thereby very sustainworthy citizens insecurely housed, sofa-surfing, or camping in the gutter
house-ownership needs to be ‘outlawed’
and that with immediate ‘de facto’ effect;
and legislatively & constitutionally, collective-ownership & responsibility needs to replace it,
under a total lease-rental system.
————————————
Compounding the whole life-sector of Housing and Human Community
Development, is the destructively-adversary win-lose competitive legal and social system;
in short, none of the Housing Associations I have looked at have any first-resort, nor any intention of introducing a
“No-Lose’ Cooperatively Participative Sustainworthy-Hows Recognition and Problem Solving
such as the one initiated by Dr Thomas Gordon in “Parent/Teacher/Leader/People Effectiveness Training”
and further promoted by Robert Bolton in “People Skills”.
This ‘xenophobic’ blind reactionism effectively ‘cripples’ both the “Privileged Owners” and the “Disadvantaged Subjects” classes,
and hems in all the “Vicar of Bray” middle-classes too.
The right to buy….. Now what exactly does that mean? It can only mean this government intends or has set up another theft of tax payers money. They have set it up so that those with means are not refused mortgages, and those in social housing, unable to afford to buy their property, are forced further and further into the undesirable, barely livable hovels left behind.
It also means they are selling off social housing at discount prices to the slum landlord class. For example, the richest central London Boroughs have been assessing the value of the flats they have in their portofolios in order to remove the social tenents from them one way or another, to then pass them on the chums. A one bedroom flat in a Pimlico house conversion rented by housing associations to the less well off, is now worth anything up to half a million pounds plus. Remember, the refurbishment of these once damp and disrepaired units was paid for by the state, therefore the tax payer. They are our collective collaterol. But, the plans are to sell them off to those they have worked into them. Or, to get those they see as undesirable in them, out of them so that the ‘colleagues’ either already in them or moved into them, can buy at a discount. Even with these discounts, the majority of housing tenant citizens could not afford a mortgage at any discount.
The other trick is, the housing association sells the block of flats off at a discount rate to developers, (remember the public paid for these) these people then end the tenancies of the resident social housing tenants, on the grounds the flats are unfilt for purpose. You will find these buildings are in areas that is expected to explode in value. They do a cheap refurbishment and then sell then on to the private market at huge profits. The social tenants having been made homeless or forced to leave their neighbourhood as they now no longer qualify for social housing and have to go to the bottom of any list.
It is a big scam and these Tory grinners make comments like, ‘If you feel bad don’t, they will get their vengence when their lot get in again.’ And it is all at the cost of the tax payers of Britain to do this to themselves.
Anyway, this right to buy is another Thatcher bribe, they think the public are daft enough to swallow it again. But, I don’t think so.
PS: Every party who has an interest in an honest vote at the GE should be making plans to follow all ballot boxes from pollling stations to counting house. Otherwise, be prepared for the Scottish scam.
FYI: The ‘Affordable Homes’ and the ‘Affordable Housing Contributions (Ten Unit Threshold) Bills [A] never completed their journeys.
As for refusing the whip: Royal Assent has been given to the ‘House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015’ (under H in the list). There were some last ditch attempts at report stage in the Commons to constrain the bill to existing disciplinary measures but it failed.
This now means that any old codswallop can be used to get rid of members. As legislation stood a peer could only be removed from Parliament for the duration of that Parliament. They would return in the next. The writ of summons can now be removed permanently.
Bills (approx) at close of Parliament…
2014-15: HL 31, C 128, RA 36
2013-14: HL 32, C 146, RA 36
2012-13: HL 31, C 101, RA 51
2010-12: HL 25, C 223, RA 64
Total: 904
Ref: Bills before Parliament 2014-15
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/
Bills before Parliament 2013-14
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14.html
Bills before Parliament 2012-13
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13.html
Bills before Parliament 2010-12
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-12.html
It is a strange phenomena, but, those we raise in this country that become the movers and shakers in our government, both sides of the house, obviously despise the British man and woman. The working classes and society that is.
It coincides with the immigrant who raise their sons and daughters here, who then goon to either lop off the heads of our people in the street, or, run to fight against us with terrorists in other lands.
Perhaps it’s something in the water that is causing this pitifull scenario, or, could it be the LHC messing with the particles that balance our planet?
The other, more plausable reason is, they are taught by those who want the downfall of our country.
The ‘House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015’ gives the houses whips an enormous amount of power to intimidate and threaten members with suspension or expulsion. An extremist government has afforded protection to two serving peers whose conduct is in serious breach of the constitution by sitting in on Commons business, namely the committee stage of the 2013 SSC Marriage Bill.
The House Briefing Paper on the bill (3.3) describes how the Deputy Speaker makes reference to a Standing Order.
“the Question was not decided because fewer than 40 Members had taken part in the Division, and the business under consideration stood over until the next sitting of the House (Standing Order No. 41)”
And from Erskine May:
“The subsequent consideration of business upon which a question has been put, but not decided because of the lack of a quorum in the division … does not constitute an adjourned debate. When the business is considered again, the motion or order of the day concerned must be moved afresh, and Members who have spoken in the earlier debate may speak again.”
At third reading the bill emerges from the exclusive privacy of committee room ‘democracy’ to open and inclusive democracy in the chamber. The most important bill in 300 years and the house is ‘totally’ empty, a ghost town. Tumble weed blown by the wind of change, drifts slowly across the floor of the house. A solitary pale rider sits by the opposition despatch box.
A handful is present on the government back benches and amendments are moved. But quite oddly the deputy speaker knowing that a quorum of 40 members must be present to form a division does not move that the debate be adjourned to another sitting as required by Parliamentary Procedure outlined in Erskine May.
The bill goes on to be given Royal Assent and a commencement date when both the Executive and Privy Council know that the bill has not properly completed its journey through Parliament. The Executive with the full support of the Commons has acted in contempt of Parliament to subvert democratic accountability.
Ref: House Briefing Paper: 3.3 Report Stage
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN07093/house-of-lords-expulsion-and-suspension-bill-hl-201415
Before the reformation the powers invested in the regent existed as a separation of state and church. After the reformation these powers were combined indivisibly within the sovereign person of regent.
Inevitably, conflicts of interest that affect Monarchy would arise out of prospective bills in either house. With the removal of the Lord Chancellor from the Woolsack resolution of these conflicts now becomes the responsibility of Speakers in both houses even though they do not have the precautionary power to prevent the executive from starting bills in their respective houses. Precedent is driving a new chapter of Erskine & May.
A question therefore must be asked of Speaker Bercow: upon whose authority did the Queen release some in marriage from observing or abiding by Gods seventh commandment? Such a question could not be asked of the Sovereigns of Spain or Belgium because here the powers of church and state are separate.