| Topic: | Re:Re:14,000 new homes in the Uxbridge Road corridor by 2026 | |
| Posted by: | George Knox | |
| Date/Time: | 02/02/10 14:11:00 |
| I watched last night part 1 of The Tower Block of Commons programme on Channel4 - a few MPs swapping their jobs for life on Council sink estates. I know anyway from own visits about the utter deprivation disrepair and fear which can be found. There is so much evidence from the experts about how bad it is for people to live in monstrous high rise blocks and how bad it is for neighbour hoods. Although the first programme in some part recorded the MPs getting over the shock of what they had let themselves in for, what to me was really astounding was just really how far they are removed from what goes on in the poverty end of the world in the UK. These were MPs from all main parties. There wasn’t so much a problem with language as the hosts were mainly very vocal. It was more Darwinesque. It was as though these MPs had suddenly chanced upon a new tribe of people who live so utterly differently from the MPs. And these were MPs who are responsible for shaping our lives. They are experienced and well educated and articulate but they were ignorant and in some cases very lacking in empathy. The programme was a serious indictment of very very poor Housing management – something which for so many Councillors in this country carry the blame – Ealing included. So if the MPs were so bad, what hope is there for wannabe Councillors? The benefits trap not only discourages people from working, but even when they start, then there is the housing trap which prevents so many from affording to leave for better housing. To even countenance building new high rise shows just how ignorant our Council is. To try and impose a repeat of social deprivation and add to the process of wrecking our towns and the borough is just a continuation of what Mrs Thatcher started and the follow my Tory leader Socialists have done since 1997. Yes we need social engineering on a grand 1930s Germany scale and if Prescott did what he said he would do in terms of huge house building then the problem would not be so bad. Who to vote for? Wow! And our local opposition parties are so incontrovertibly wet in that they just will not tell us what they propose for this Borough. So the Tories take the old bribe and get Council pockets lined with Section 106 monies for pet projects in the Borough over which there seems little control in exchange for an assault on our communities with new tower blocks. It’s time for the London Councils to tell any government to sod off and build new towns near the motorways. It’s time for long term unemployed homeless to be decanted. Got that over with! I don’t know Scrutiny works, but if the questions in the consultations are not partly engineered by the people, then what is Scrutiny? Parliament needs to change but that is another debate. Eric, will your meeting have Council Officers who will engage in the debate? |