Rising Homelessness In A Rich Civilised Society???

           There is something rotten at the heart of UK, and it is the economic system. While the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, attempts to get us all into a lather over Brexit spewing out how we must get a good deal for businesses, a smooth path for our corporate lords and masters, here in the lives of ordinary people we have seen conditions rapidly deteriorate. And that has nothing to do with Brexit, it is all down to ideological choices within the capitalist system. Apart from wages being ten years behind, social care disappearing, our health service cracking under the strain of under funding, homelessness is rocketing.
         A country that is the sixth richest on the planet and doesn't house its citizens adequately is obviously involved in a failed system, or is waging class war, or both. It is not by accident, nor is it inevitable, that thousands of people in this country are homeless, it is by economic choices. By deliberate government policy, the number of council houses in the UK has fallen by 165,000 since 2010, and while in the year 2014-15 the number of millionaires in the UK has grown by 12%, the number of homeless has grown by 34% since 2010. In capitalism, we live under a system of extreme inequality and injustice, it can't be remedy to improve the lives of all, it can't be modified to be compassionate and fair, it has to be destroyed for justice and equality to flower. 

 

 

        The number of families being declared homeless has rocketed by more a third since the Conservatives took power in 2010, analysis of new official statistics by The Independent has revealed.
      Between April 2016 and March 2017, 59,100 families were declared homeless by local authorities in England – a rise of 34 per cent on the same period in 2010-11.
        The statistics paint a bleak picture of the UK housing crisis and the impact a lack of decent, affordable homes is having on thousands of families.

        Obviously in a capitalist society, as opposed to a civilised society, a safe place to lay your head and raise a family, is not a right or even a priority. Your safety and comfort is solely dependent on the wealth you accumulate, and the system is loaded against the ordinary people. 

     Conservative housing policy since 2010 has prioritised the privatisation of social housing, both by extending the Right to Buy scheme and by forcing councils to sell off their most valuable council homes to private individuals and companies.
      At the same time, ministers have mandated that social homes available at heavily discounted rents should be replaced by a new type of affordable housing that has more expensive rents much closer to market rates.
      The newly released data shows a huge rise in the number of people being made homeless as a result of losing their social home. In the past 12 months, 4,010 families were declared homeless after losing a home rented in the social sector – a 56 per cent increase in six years.

Read the full article HERE: 

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The Right To A Roof.

       The Bullingdon Boys sitting comfortably in those Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption, when they are not shootin' and fishin' in their country estates, can spout all they want about how they are on course to “fix” the UK. What they don't make clear is what that “fix” really means. It means continuing to shift all the wealth in the UK upwards. It means getting rid of social spending, taxes can be a drag on profits, it means getting wages down and creating a subservient workforce, it means getting rid of decent working conditions, an attack on health and safety, and the privatisation of “everything” that can make their corporate buddies a buck or two. So you could say, they are doing well at “fixing” the UK. 

          One of the effects of their “fixing” doesn't get much cover in the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, evictions. So just for the record, during the first three months of 2015, bailiffs in England and Wales, evicted over 11,000 families, this is an increase of 8% on last year, and 51% on the same period of 2010. This equates to roughly to 126 families forced from their homes daily. Rising rents and benefit cuts are making rented accommodation unaffordable and has push evictions to a six year high. 2014 saw almost 42,000 families evicted from rented accommodation, the highest since 2000. 2015 is set to break that record. These eviction are spread across private and social landlords, with social landlords, including housing associations taking the lion's share.

        Stagnant wages and benefit cuts/caps leave many people unable to continue to pay their way. The latest figure for England and Wales is that over the last two years almost 59,000 families have had the benefits capped. 

       These figures are just for England and Wales, I have no doubt the picture will be similar in Scotland and Northern Ireland. This then is the basis on which the Oxbridge parasites claim victory in “fixing” the UK. Their vision of unfettered wealth and power to their class at the expense of the ordinary people, is moving steadily to fruition. Their class conduct a steady class war to stifle any resistance to the growth of their greed. It will continue as long as we continue to plead our case for them to be a little bit more generous to us, to treat us a little more kindly. It will only end when we finally decide to stand up and say, we have had enough, we are now taking control of our own lives and screw you, from now on, we will change the entire economic system. 

     It is long over due, over the last seven years or so we have seen unimaginable wealth generated and syphoned into the coffers of the rich and powerful. At the same time we have had "austerity" (translates as ideologically driven economics) slashing at the heart of the social conditions of the ordinary people, the very ones that create all that wealth in the first place.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Lambeth Town Hall Occupation.

      Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth, (HASL) are a group who believe in direct action. Pissed off by their treatment from the local council, doing the dirty work of the, Cameron/Osborne Oxbridge millionaire cabal, the decided to pay a visit to Lambeth Council Town Hall. What a colourful addition they made to its drab interior. More steam to their elbow.

From HASL:
       This afternoon, Monday 16th February, around 30 HASL members visited Lambeth council’s town hall demanding ‘social housing not social cleansing’. The local housing group, made up of homeless and precariously housed people, visited the town hall in the half-term holiday with their children to give the council a sense of what temporary housing feels like: cramped, noisy, and disruptive!
      We were joined in our occupation of the town hall’s lobby by Lambeth Pensioners’ Action Group taking our numbers to 50+!
Lambeth council refused to meet with our group to speak with us about our concerns and shamefully called the cops to try and evict us. About 10 police came and harrassed our members. We have still not received a response to our letter to Lib Peck about our concerns about recent changes to the social housing register and new powers to force homeless people into the private sector – both of which make everyone’s access to social housing even more difficult. We will continue our campaign on these issues and continue informing people of their rights if they are being pressured into the private sector. See our new leaflet here.
      The action is one of many happening across London as part of the Radical Housing Network’s week of action.

     Pictures from the action on Flickr can be found here.

Massive thanks to everyone who joined us today!

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Glasgow Games Monitor.

A wee message from The Glasgow Game Monitor 2014:

Hi all,

      We've updated the Housing Monster event page on the site. It now has youtube clips of all the films, a list of non-academic (accessible) reading materials, and some photos of the event. Please circulate to anyone who might be interested in viewing the films or accessing the reading material. http://gamesmonitor2014.org/fighting-the-housing-monster-film-and-discussion-event-sat-nov-1st-kpc-11am-4pm/

     We've added people who gave their names at the end of the event to the Games Monitor 2014 list. The traffic is very light at the moment but if you don't want to be on the list, our apologies, just unsubscribe at the bottom of the page. Also this is an announcements list, so if anyone wants to contact the group please contact us personally or use the contact address: gamesmonitor2014@googlemail.com Thanks to everyone who came, we all enjoyed the event! We'll let you know if anything else is planned. Cheers, Glasgow Games Monitor 2014

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Underworld Of Glasgow's Dirty Politics.

This from Glasgow Games Monitor:

 

Hi all,

      The Housing meeting organised for Bridgeton Community Learning Campus, tomorrow, Tuesday 18th March has been blocked by the board of directors. This was clearly a politically motivated decision so we've decided to make a public statement on the blog. Please circulate widely as we think people really need to know about this.

        We are trying to re-organise the meeting in an alternate venue very soon and hope to open things up more widely to discuss the dire condition social housing is in, and the way that critical debate has been closed down via regeneration agencies.

Housing Meeting Blocked in Bridgeton:

http://gamesmonitor2014.org/2014/03/17/housing-meeting-blocked-in-bridgeton/

Cheers,http://gamesmonitor2014.org/

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Glasgow Diary Date.

A reminder from Glasgow Games Monitor 2014: 
Hi all,

    Our next group meeting is on Monday 3rd March, 7-9pm, Unite the Union offices, John Smith House, 145/165 West Regent Street, Glasgow G2 4RZ. Meeting Dates:

http://gamesmonitor2014.org/meetings/Contact: gamesmonitor2014@googlemail.com 

      Also, giving advance notice that we will be holding a joint HOUSING CRISIS meeting with Unite the Community Union at the Bridgeton Community Learning Campus, on Tuesday March 18th, 7-9pm: http://www.bclc.org.uk/ We will be examining the promises of housing made for the Games and Clyde Gateway and more generally drawing attention to the annihilation of social housing in Glasgow, Scotland and the UK more generally. More details to follow soon, please add to your diaries and let others know if interested. Cheers,http://gamesmonitor2014.org/

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

It's A Global Rip-off Sytstem.

        Every Thursday in Madrid, protesters, among them many pensioners, turn up to demonstrate outside the main banks such as Bankia. When Spain's property bubble burst in 2008, the banks attempted to balance their books by encouraging some 300,000 families to invest their life's savings into complex preference shares. The families say that instead of being warned of the risks, they were assured that the shares could not be safer. Now the banks are bust, the money has gone, and thousands pensioners and families have lost everything. There are thousands of arbitration cases, which can take years, and some are being offered a fraction of their savings. Of course to be a 70+ year old pensioner and told that your case will take years and it will be a fraction of what you had, is hardly justice. That money didn't just vanish into thin air, it went somewhere, just one of the many ways this system siphons wealth upwards to the pampered parasitic class.

 Photo from Demotix.

 

       Another way to syphon wealth from the ordinary people to that group of leeches, is to sell off public assets. Staying with Madrid, there have been protests there against the selling off of publicly owned affordable housing stock, to venture capitalists, which results in increased rents and evictions. This is the way this system, controled by the financial Mafia, works, everything can become a money-maker, all you have to do is force the ordinary people to pay, if they don't, then like the banks, steal their money, or the venture capitalists, evict them.

Photo from Demotix.

  

Main banner of the demonstration, in Spanish: 'Right to housing for everyone, out vulture funds. Against the financial scam'.

        This is Spain, but it is not unique, across the globe the pattern is the same, it is a world wide con-system, a universal rip-off, a system that for the many, it produces struggle, poverty and deprivation, for the few, opulence. When the financial Mafia talk of growth, they are talking about their balance sheets, that need have nothing beneficial for you and I. The system is run by the wealthy parasites and everything they do will be to protect and increase that wealth, we are incidental to them, to be used, or abandoned as surplus to requirements. Is this what we want for our kids and grandkids? The choice is ours to make, we can destroy this greed drive system of exploitation, and replace it with one that sees to the needs of all our people. We have the imagination, the ability and the resources, all that is missing is the will. Think, what type of heritage do you want to leave to the next generation? 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Vicious Bedroom Tax.

        Come April all those tenants living in social housing will be thrown into turmoil. 1^st. April sees the implementation of the millionaire ConDem's new “bedroom tax” come into operation. This will be a severe kick in the teeth for millions across the country. What this translates into is that couples, children of the same sex and children under 10 years of age of different sex, should share a bedroom. If after this arrangement you have a spare room, you will have options. You can move out to a smaller house, take a lodger or pay a fine on a monthly basis. This is the dictate from those who have several homes, all of which will have an abundance of spare rooms. The facts on the ground prove that they can't square the circle. Which is not unusual for this mob, according to

figures from the Department for Work and Pensions, at least 600,000 one bedroom flats will be needed to house tenants who currently fall into the “under-occupying” category. Are the apartments there? Well the answer is no, at present social housing landlords have approximately 360,000 one bedroom flats on their books. To add to the chaos of this completely ill-thought scheme, there are only about 300,000 families who need a 3 bedroom apartment, while social housing landlords have available 560,000. So if you are “classified” as a one bedroom tenant, there is a good chance you will have to accept a larger apartment and be fined for the social housing inadequacies. Like wise if they make sure they only fit tenants into the”right sized box”, then there will be thousands who will have to be homeless and thousands of apartments will have to lie empty as there are not enough “right sized” families to suit. Apart from the possible penalty if you stay put in a home with a spare room, there is the trauma of uprooting elderly people who have probably lived their entire life in that particular home, and shunting them miles away from friends and family. As well as the upset of forcing a family to move when they may not want to move, for whatever reason, job, school, family etc.. Who gives them the right to say where you should live, when you should move and how many should sleep in any room in your home?

      Stupidity driven by austerity ideology, another experiment in social engineering. How many should sleep in a room controlled by the millionaire cabal, to make sure that the peasants don't get a modicum more than is minimum to survive. Will they suddenly build all the right size apartments to fulfil their plans? Not likely, they are more likely to attempt to introduce legislation to force you to limit or increase your family to suit their housing stock. In their world of control, plans come before people.

          If this doesn't raise the anger of the general public to boiling point, then I don't know what will.

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