Respectable Housing & Saving the NHS: Ten years in the past as we speak there have been protests over two of the main points which nonetheless face our incoming authorities as we speak, however which I’ve no religion in them dealing with or bettering.
Focus E15 March for Respectable Housing – East Ham
The housing disaster largely stems from successive governments, largely beginning with Thatcher prioritising non-public possession above all different methods of offering properties for individuals. Thatcher gave away publicly owned social housing to tenants at knock-down costs and refused to permit councils to attempt to change what had been misplaced.
Authorities housing coverage since have been obsessive about the thought of the “housing ladder“; housing isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about ladders to extend private wealth however about properties, and the ladder could be very undoubtedly that in “Pull up the ladder, Jack! We’re all proper” and sod these left on the backside under.
Non-public renting has additionally moved from being a method through which homeowners of properties derived and revenue from properties they owned, to a scheme the place increasingly tenants are paying excessive rents to purchase properties for his or her landlords. It’s a loopy system and one which must be stopped.
We have now additionally seen an enormous development in properties that are largely constructed to be purchased as investments, notably by abroad traders, typically being left unoccupied for all or more often than not. Clearly this must be made economically nonviable, not solely due to the results it has on the scarcity of properties, but additionally due to the way in which it’s significantly distorting the event of our cities.
Second (and a number of) dwelling possession can also be an growing drawback, notably within the extra fascinating rural areas of the nation and we have to discover methods to cut back the impression of this, maybe via taxation to offer a fund to construct social housing in these areas.
However the primary resolution to the nation’s housing issues is easy. Construct extra social housing. Any authorities which is available in with out this as the primary thurst of their housing coverage will fail to enhance the housing disaster.
As I wrote ten years in the past “We want a authorities – nationwide and native – decided to behave for the advantage of odd individuals, making an actual try to construct way more social housing, eradicating the large subsidies at present given to personal landlords via housing profit, legislating to offer honest contracts for personal tenants and provides them first rate safety – and criminalising unfair evictions.” We haven’t bought one.
You possibly can learn extra concerning the march in East Ham organised by Focus E15 Mums to demand safe housing, free from the threats of eviction, hovering non-public rents, rogue landlords, letting brokers illegally discriminating, insecure tenancies and unfair bed room tax and profit cap on My London Diary.
The march was supported by housing protest teams from Hackney, Brent and from South London and organisations together with BARAC and TUSC. I used to be stunned to see the favored assist it acquired on the streets with even some motorists stopping their automobiles to place cash within the assortment buckets.
Extra at Focus E15 March for Respectable Housing.
Save our Surgical procedures on NHS 66th Birthday – Whitechapel
The Nationwide Well being Service started on fifth July 1948 and on its 66th anniversary the Save our Surgical procedures marketing campaign in opposition to well being cuts in Tower Hamlets marched to Hackney in a present of opposition to well being cuts, surgical procedure closures and NHS privatisation.
The organising of the NHS was opposed by the Conservatives they usually and the docs and dentists associations compelled many compromises which led to it being a lower than complete well being service, although nonetheless an excellent nationwide achievement and one which for we’re justly pleased with.
Many docs made – and a few nonetheless make – giant incomes from non-public observe and fought to maintain these quite than again a common system wholeheartedly. However in more moderen years an enormous non-public medical system has grown up alongside the NHS and increasingly persons are coated via work schemes offering non-public medical cowl.
This non-public system has grown parasitically on the state medical system and all governments over the previous thirty or extra years have discovered methods to syphon off cash to it, by permitting it to tender for varied extra simple facets of NHS providers.
Successive governments have additionally created enormous administrative burdens on the NHS, organising new ranges of directors which oversee and to some extent override medical choices. However financially probably the most disastrous impression on the NHS comes from the varied PFI agreements, largely made underneath New Labour, which enabled the constructing of latest hospitals with out the prices showing within the authorities’s money owed, however tied the trusts working the hospitals into enormous debt repayments and the form of service contracts that make changing a lightweight bulb price £1200.
Common observe was arrange in 1948 underneath doctor-owned surgical procedures however more and more these at the moment are owned by healthcare corporations after New Labour in 2007 allowed bigger corporations to purchase them up. Operose Well being, a part of US healthcare big Centene Company in 2022 was working 70 practices and a BBC Panorama report confirmed they had been solely using half as many docs as common practices, whereas using six instances as many doctor associates (who’ve solely 2 years of medical coaching quite than the ten for GPs) who had been being inadequately supervised.
Sadly Labour coverage seems to be to extend the reliance – and switch of funds to the non-public sector quite than cut back it. You possibly can learn extra about their place within the 2023 Tribune article Labour’s Love Affair with Non-public Healthcare by Tom Blackburn, which aslo units out clearly the monetary hyperlinks of Wes Streeting to personal healthcare. And naturally he isn’t the one Labour MP with a monetary curiosity. Labour may kind out a number of of the issues however the creeping privatisation appears certain to speed up.
The protest in East London was over modifications within the funding of NHS surgical procedures which have did not keep in mind the additional wants of disadvantaged innner-city areas and had been anticipated to steer the closure of some surgical procedures in addition to different NHS cuts, notably these taking place due to the large PFI debt from the brand new Royal London Hospital.
There was a short rally in Altab Ali Park earlier than the march with speeches by native politicians and well being campaigners earlier than the gang of a number of a whole lot set off down the Whitechapel Highway on its method to London Fields in Hackney the place it was to fulfill up with different protesters for a bigger rally. However I left the march at Whitechapel Station.
Extra at
Tags: 2014, BBC Panorama, purchase to let, Respectable Housing, East Ham, eviction, Focus E15, give-away, Hackney, properties, housing, housing disaster, housing ladder, insecure tenancies, funding properties, landlord’s mortages, letting brokers, London, march, NHS, NHS 66th Birthday, NHS anniversary, Operose Well being, peter Marshall, PFI, non-public possession, privatisation, protest, proper to purchase, rogue landlords, save our surgical procedures, second properties, hovering non-public rents, social housing, Tower Hamlets, Wes Streeting, Whitechapel
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