Remember the ALMO!!
lenin | 20.01.2004 21:05 | Analysis
The government plans to privatise all council housing by the year 2010. Confluently, it has set councils the goal of meeting all recommended renovation and repair targets by 2010. And by another happy coincidence, it has told councils involved that they may only have new government money to cover these repairs if it adopts the ALMO scheme. Such are the Mafia-like intrigues of this government, (in all probability, though, concocted by some cunning civil servants), that councils are floating on a surfeit of offers they may not refuse. This device was first deployed to force recalcitrant councils to accept PFI deals for their schools and hospitals...
The lurid, wasteful story of council house privatisations and quasi-privatisations fits into a larger picture of ideologically driven waste of tax money and destruction of public services.
It underlines the desperate need for an alternative to New Labour. The story begins here:
"The first rule of democracy is you never ask for permission. If you offer a referendum on something you want to do anyway, you’re only inviting trouble. So it was when residents of Camden defied government bank-rolled propaganda, wave upon wave of leaflets offering the prospect of new money and renovations for homes if only they would allow their homes to be run by private contractors, and voted the proposals down by 77% . A thumping victory like that won’t replicate itself in Westminster, because Westminster Council has already imposed ALMOs in its residents, sans scrutin." ...
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_leninology_archive.html#107463182160639687
It underlines the desperate need for an alternative to New Labour. The story begins here:
"The first rule of democracy is you never ask for permission. If you offer a referendum on something you want to do anyway, you’re only inviting trouble. So it was when residents of Camden defied government bank-rolled propaganda, wave upon wave of leaflets offering the prospect of new money and renovations for homes if only they would allow their homes to be run by private contractors, and voted the proposals down by 77% . A thumping victory like that won’t replicate itself in Westminster, because Westminster Council has already imposed ALMOs in its residents, sans scrutin." ...
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_leninology_archive.html#107463182160639687
lenin
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Comments
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It's Everywhere
20.01.2004 23:20
The Council's propaganda (which is costing huge sums which could have been spent on housing repairs & upgrades) is echoed word for word by the so-called "Independent Tenants' Advisor", a company from the Manchester area called MSC. Tenants are constantly being told that MSC is 'independent', but MSC has recently had to admit that it is being paid (from our rents and council tax) solely to put the Council's version of events.
There is a campaign against 'transfer', but it does not have access to huge sums of public money to spend on glossy brochures, and is the constant victim of innuendo, smears and downright lies & thuggery from Wrexham County Borough Council.
If Blair and his little puppet Rhodri Morgan are able to make billions available to the RSLs in the coming years, then that money must already be there - in which case, there is no reason not to make that available to the councils. Unless, of course, the aim is simply ideological, and to remove the costs of bringing housing stock up to standard from the balance sheet, so that the Sons Of The SDP can reassure the Daily Mail and the IMF that they're maintaining a tight control on public expenditure.
TheJudge
help is at hand
21.01.2004 17:06
activist