Those Labour politicians who supported the demonstration organised by the Board of Deputies against the Labour Party, did so on the grounds that they were standing in solidarity with “the Jewish community”. In fact there is no such thing as the Jewish …Read more…
Anti-Semitism, real and counterfeit
What is the scale of the problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, real or imagined? I am not a Labour member so I don’t directly know what happens in Labour meetings around the country, though I obviously read reports and speak to friends wh…Read more…
Swindon – the real picture Part 2
Crisis of housing affordability Both David Renard the Council Leader and MP Robert Buckland highlighted from the Centre for Cities report the fact that house prices in Swindon were lower than many other places on the list. That might attract people fro…Read more…
Swindon – the real picture (Part One)
What’s happening with earnings? News from the Centre for Cities report was picked up by local politicians as an opportunity to declare how well things were going in the town. The rate of productivity per worker saw the town ranked seventh, whilst…Read more…
Labour should end Right to Buy
During his first leadership election Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by Red Brick, the blog of London Labour Housing Group. He was asked about the issue of Right to Buy (RTB). He responded that he would vote against the extension of RTB to housing associ…Read more…
Is Labour’s Housing policy shifting leftwards?
Is Labour’s housing policy shifting leftwards? It’s official policy of suspending Right to Buy (RTB) sales was introduced by Teresa Pearce1 when she was temporarily Shadow Housing Minister. This was after John Healey had participated in the…Read more…
Councils need government grant to fund large scale council house building programme
This is an article published on the Labour Briefing website Raising the ‘borrowing cap’ is not a solution to the council housing shortage There has been much talk of late about councils being able to “ borrow to build” new council housing. …Read more…
“Tenants pay for housing fiascos, from post-Grenfell bills to ‘self-financing’ “
This was a letter published in the Guardian. The suggestion that lifting the borrowing cap will enable councils to build council housing on a grand scale ignores the funding crisis faced by local authority Housing Revenue Accounts. Council HRAs still h…Read more…
Lessons from the collapse of Carillion
There is a lot to unpick from Carillion’s demise and the lessons to be drawn. Here are some initial observations. The House of Commons Library Briefing, The collapse of Carillion, tells us that “In the eight years from 2009 to 2016, Carillion pai…Read more…
Swindon Advertiser journalists strike
Congratulations to the Adver journalists on having the courage to take industrial action. For the younger ones amongst them this will be the first time they have taken strike action. They would not have done so without having genuine grievances. Someti…Read more…
Why is housing benefit stopped when claiming Universal Credit?
The difficulties facing people on Universal Credit are now widely known. People making a claim are faced with a wait of 6 weeks or more before they get their first payment. One of the critical components of UC is the housing element which replaces hous…Read more…
“A radical programme of action”
This is an article published in the Morning Star on October 10th 2017 Jeremy Corbyn’s conference announcement that Labour would be carrying out a review “of social housing policy – its building, planning, regulation and management” is very welcome. So is his comment that “Labour would speak…Read more…
May: limping towards the finishing line?
Writing this on the Monday before the election only a mug would predict the outcome. The polls are all over the place. However, given the fact that May called the election to give herself ‘a stronger mandate’, if she does not secure an increased majority she will have suffered a big…Read more…
No price on democratic rights
A letter to the Swindon Advertiser What exactly does InSwindon think it is? The town centre’s political police? They don’t appear to even know what is on their own website. Under the page ‘for Business’ it refers to charges for leaflet distribution under two pieces of…Read more…
Homelessness and the Housing Revenue Account
Swindon Council’s second raid on the housing account As Swindon Council faces the decline of central government Revenue Support Grant year on year, it has scrabbled around desperately looking for ways of saving money. Its imposition of parish councils on the town without a democratic mandate…Read more…
Tackling “rogue landlords”?
A number of new or amended regulations in relation to the Private Rented Sector have come into force on April 6th. 1) Rent Repayment Orders Rent Repayment Orders (RROs) were introduced by the 2004 Housing Act in response to situations where the landlor…Read more…
Paying more for worse services
This is a letter to the Swindon Advertiser Paying more for worse services I’ve just received my council tax notice with a 10.9% increase for 2017/18. As Mr Renard finally admitted in his column residents are paying more for less. These very high increases are the result of the flagrantly…Read more…
Park Library campaign success
Faced with the prospect of an end to funding for Park Library, Parks & East Walcot Community Forum called a meeting to discuss the situation. The individuals and organisations that attended agreed to campaign for the Council to maintain Park Library as part of its core service. We managed to…Read more…
20 years of defending the safety critical role of the guard
The current struggle in defence of the safety critical role of the guard is not a new one. The threat to eradicate this role began in 1997. Although the media has presented the issue as one of who will open the train doors, it is about who controls the train. In the event of a […]Read more…
A ‘low wage, low welfare’ town
It’s all very well David Renard clutching the Cities Report for a photo opportunity, but if you want to make an objective assessment of the state of the town you have to look at all of it, rather than picking out a few tables which can be used to show the brilliance of our municipal […]Read more…