It seems rather inappropriate for Brent Labour Party to set up a stall this Saturday coming outside Sainsbury's in Willeasden Green to campaign over housing. They will be accompanied by Claude Moraes MEP and other candidates for the European elections.
Claude and his friends would do well to pop along the road to the building site which used to be the Willesden Green Library. Brent Labour Council gave away the land to developers who are building luxury flats in exchange for a small cultural centre.
The agents marketing the flats in Singapore boasted in their advertising (in case foreign buyers should be tainted by the poor) that none of the flats were affordable housing or for key workers. LINK
First reaction: next year's election should be fought on the housing, environmental and social issues that this hideous advert so eloquently illustrates.
ReplyDeleteImmediate realisation: in election terms,who would the fight be between?
The three main parties who all agreed the development and Make Willesden Green and the Green Party who opposed it.
ReplyDeleteOur local environment, the proportion of our income it costs us to live in it, what we want it to remain like or to change into are out of our hands. The London property market will remain a profitable reserve currency for the international rich and they and their agents will determine all these things unless and until we make it too painful for our politicians to allow this situation to continue.
ReplyDeleteThey'll be whoring for our votes locally and nationally over the next year. Let them know what they need to do to get our indulgence.
Labour campaigning on housing in Willesden? It's like a dog smelling it's own shit.
ReplyDelete'Small' cultural centre, which is actually larger than the previous library. Feel free to rightly address the flats and how they are advertised, but do not belittle what could be a fantastic new centre. Ironic how the vast improvement in carbon emissions have never been mentioned as a positive feature of the development either, being from the Green Party and all...
ReplyDeleteThoroughly disingenuous to say the new library is larger - only if you count circulation space, that is space which does not house books, computers, staff etc.
DeleteYes i was counting that, so thoroughly correct to say it is larger. Could you provide me with accurate details on the previous and proposed floorspace used for shelves, computer desks and staff desks, or are you guessing?
DeleteAll the information was made public during the "consultation" and restated at the Planning Committee meeting which made the decision.
DeleteFrench fencing term called for at this point I think ........
DeleteNot really...the library's bigger, and the cultural centre is not 'small' unless you class the previous library 'minuscule', end of.
DeleteYes the cultural centre is big, I'll give you that. it needs to be to fit in all those council offices, which benefit residents how, exactly?
DeleteHasn't Green Party in Brighton seen recycling rates go down? less Green more Marxist
ReplyDeleteI don't recall Marx's views on cutting recycling rates: remind me ..........
DeleteI don't know much about Marx and his attitude to recycling, but I do remember that several years ago staff at Brent Archives discovered from an old deed that Frederick (aka Friedrick) Engels bought a house in Willesden Lane in the 1880's. Foreigners buying up our housing stock is not just a new thing, although Engels did lease out the house he had bought to a family, not just keep it empty as an appreciating capital asset.
DeletePhilip.
Frederick Engels had to pay rent for the house he lived in. He did not buy a house to rent to others. He wrote a pamphlet called The Housing Question which is worth reading. As a teacher I notice that a lot of my students are being moved by Brent Council to places like Luton simply because they cannot afford the rent. Are people aware of this?
ReplyDeleteDear Seamus,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I will try to find a copy of "The Housing Question" to read - it is to the shame of politicians that the housing situation for many people is still not solved, and, as you say, London families are being moved out to Luton, or Coventry or even further north because of the excessive rent levels here.
I apologise if I got it wrong about Engels, but the document which was uncovered at Brent Archives was definitely a mortgage deed, which led the team there to believe that he had actually bought the house in Willesden Lane from the builder in 1883. There is an article about it at page 27 in the December 2011 / January 2012 Brent Magazine, which can be found online by anyone interested at:
http://www.brent.gov.uk/council-news/the-brent-magazine/view-back-issues-from-2012/ .
Philip.
Dear Philip,
ReplyDeletei have just read the article you referred to and perhaps i owe you an apology. i would like to research this a bit though as i have read all of the letters written by Engels in the Marx Engels Collected works from the 1880s and i do not recall anything about a mortgage (although there are several letters to his own landlord). if i find out anything quickly i shall post it here