Do you recognise the house in the picture. Its likely that you do if you have seen the 1966 film "Bullit" starring Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughan. It was the house of Senator Walter Chalmers, the corrupt official trying to get his own way by bringing the mob to justice in San Francisco.
Its unlikely that anyone would get to live in a house like this in London, although there have been allegations that people have been living on benefits and lording it up in Kensington and Chelsea whilst people who are working are unable to get property in any part of London.
Well guess what? The ToriesLibDems have just made it that bit more difficult for anyone to get ANY property in London if they are on benefits. The reasoning is that they have said that the maximum limit for property will be set at £400.00 a week rented accommodation. That would just about lease you the average shoe box. There are many families whose accommodation costs more than this; where will they now go. Friends of mine are renting property in the suburbs for about £700.00 per month and the last I heard of them was years ago? Where will all these people live?
The scares of housing benefit people being cleansed out of the Smoke are now running so rife that councils are block booking bed and breakfast in Hastings and other places to deal with the overspill and the dispossessed. The ToryLibDams have also put the blocks on anyone under 35 being able to get anything other than the single room rate. In other words, you will virtually not qualify for anything other than a bedsit if you are under 35 years old. And I think there must be a shortage of bedsit stock in London, just as there is a limit to everything.
This reminds me so much of my experience in London, leaving home in my early 20's to find that all I had was a crabby bedsit or series of them, being too afraid to get a flat because I could not afford it. Ultimately and eventually being forced out of London and never able to go back because of the price of accommodation. The ToryLibDam idea of landlords lowering their prices because of the lack of availability of housing benefit is not going to work. So all we are left with is the professional classes being able to rent property. Whole swaythes of Londoners will be dispossessed under the new rules.
This is one of the most frightening things that I have seen since Thatcher. In lots of ways this government is going to be worse. Its kidding us that everything is fair. How about this for fairness. A judge has ruled that the taxpayer will have to pick up the tab for BT pensions. This could be as much as £22.4BN. Not something that Thatcher readily mentioned during her years in office when she privatised it.
We obviously recall someone in a country not so far aware that carried on this sort of cleansing regime during the 1930's and 1940's. The parallels are uncanny. Some years later people though it was not a terribly good idea. We must fight and fight hard the idea that whole cabels of people have to be transferred from London to bed and breakfast accommodation because they cant afford it. Oh and one last thing, I hope this government gets on ITS bike, rather than telling us to do so. Disgusting is not the word I would be seeking.
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