There use to be a company called Colbalt UK, maybe linked to jarvis, who use to run a cheap labour scheme (YTS, ET) from the building next to WH smith, on Church Street - maybe it would be worth finding out the links through 'who owns who' in the library.
What are the tenants doing about the move over? It is all scarey stuff. even if people are trying to get out of this situation and trying to buy a house, they really have no chance either property devlopers, speculaters, the parents of students and people with money buying for investments and grabbing everything. No council houses, can't afford to by a house where is the future taking people?

In reply to:

"Didn't Cobalt UK use to be a security firm"
on 22.02.2004 09:43 by Dazza

Well Cobalt, is a subsidary of Liverpool Housing Trust(LHT) COBALT (housing co.ltd,) stands for "COmmunities By the ALT"

You said:
"What are the tenants doing about the move over?"

The vote for transfer was in April 2002, the 'VOTE NO' campaign totally wore me out, it was something like 6 months regular work leafleting some fly-posting, some door to door canvassing right across, Norris Green, Croxteth, Gillmoss, Sparrow Hall and Fazakerly.

There ain't no organised opposition, in the COBALT area, a leaflet we put out end of 2002 said "COBALT - LHT, we don't want your tenancy" we gave them out to people outside post offices, also the majority of tenants didn't vote for COBALT when you add into the 34% NO with those who didn't vote that is, we organised a small picket outside LHT's AGM at the end of 2002 at the exclusive Liverpool Yachting mariner club.

All the tenants groups were in the pocket of LHT bar none )-: in fact LHT were first invited to Norris Green in the early 1990's by the house owner led tenants association, LHT ended up being the tenant advisor, suggesting ways of detaching from the council, LHT were paid £40,000 just for a one off 'feasibily study' on an entire Estate Management Board (EMB) for Norris Green, they got years of advisory fees paid for out of our rent money from the council.

COBALT won't even let people see the tenancy agreement before they sign it, they're currently sending around their housing officers to force us to sign it without being able to read it first. I said my mum's in bed ill (which she was) can you leave it for me to sign and return, he wouldn't. I'm sure there are things contained within it that they don't want us to read and consider before signing it. COBALT didn't even have the finance or a business plan before they went to the ballot. There is a board who appear to have self elected themselves, I've not voted for anyone on the COBALT board since it moved from being a shadow (again self-selected) board to a full board in 2003. They've started demolishing housing in Hambleton Close, Presall way and Cockerham way, they've just demolished a group of bungelows in Soverign way and the final remaining tower block on Storrington was demolished late last year, in fact the only remaining tower block in Norris Green and Croxteth is the one and only tower block at the junction of Lowerhouse lane and East Lancs, and the three sheltered accommodation (pensioners mostly) blocks near the show case, they are really worried about their long terms future.

What are we doing about this? Well what is there to be done, I leafleted outside post offices end of 2002, opposing what we called then "demolitions for profit". The working class are so demoralised, so under the cosh that they're close to impossible to organise, that's why we so need a breakthrough and victory of sorts to raise our collective morale. A contact telephone number has been available on 10,000 plus leafets distributed.

You said:
"It is all scarey stuff. even if people are trying to get out of this situation and trying to buy a house, they really have no chance either property devlopers, speculaters, the parents of students and people with money buying for investments and grabbing everything. No council houses, can't afford to by a house where is the future taking people?"

This process has been steadily building up right throughout the 1990's here in Liverpool. It is a process of taking out 'democracy' from public services and any aspect of working class life, as Tony Benn puts it "you can't control what you don't own" and it's completely true.

One example in Gillmoss near the British Legion Club in Shard close, is a woman who's husband died a couple of years ago, she buried the ashes of her husband in the back garden, a housing officer of the council trying to push out tenants from her neighbourhood so as to clear the land for a Tesco's and housing building for sale, told her to get over your husband's death and move. I got a copy of a letter from this woman and the council told her that because the council no longer owns the housing in Croxteth/Gillmoss that they couldn't guarantee her a home near her community. Having been inside these houses they are actually great homes, only thirty years old, large through lounge, two toilets one upstairs and one downstairs. Those who own them, will find that the paltry compensation they get from CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) won't buy them anything like it in the private sector, even the cheapest house is a shoebox in comparison to the spacious housing that councils have been building post WWII.

When I take my mum shopping we look around the North end of Liverpool and the amount of housing being demolished is horrendous, housing that with a small amount of investment could be functional and useful housing for those overcrowded families. They are demolishing quality brick built housing in Dovecot currently, clearing large areas of land for building, it's the policy of mixed social housing, introducing enclaves of middle class individualist estates into working class communities. My mum says, "but where are they putting all the tenants who are moving out?" Also before demolishing the houses are burnt (I don't believe the local children do it myself because it's usually do too thoroughly), so as to ensure they can't be refurbished and to mentally put pressure on the resistant tenants who don't want to leave, usually pensioners in fact.

There has been massive housing injustice going on throughout the 1990s to now, the reason it's getting more serious is not because there is no opposition, but because 'we' the opposition are out numbered, out resourced and excluded from the press/media and political processes. Including politically the Labour Party, Liberals, Lib-Dems for example, by collaborating trade unionists here, like Unison including it's members who were out getting overtime payments delivering Cobalts two videos to all tenants, and spinning lies "the council doesn't have the money". Then there are the traitorous and collaborating tenants/residents assocations and communities groups, bought off and silenced with council funding or even sweeted in one example by LHT grants. Then at the top of it all with Labour sympathies and council funding via a tenant levy, is the Liverpool Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations (darlings of the DCH).

I tried to get a "VOTE NO TO STOCK TRANSFER" poster displayed in the Croxteth and Gillmoss advice centre's window, they refused yet they displayed COBALT posters. On the day the ballot papers were delivered the local traitor/collaborators were out taking down our fly-posted "VOTE NO..." posters off the empty houses along the main bus routes, the same kind of traitors who hired taxis and scuttled around Pinehurst estate taking them down in 1998. It sickens me and angers me to the extreme at the injustice we're tolerating in Liverpool, the full on attacks conducted not only on tenant and community activists, the police intimdation called onto us by 'house owner' led tenants groups, Cobalt in two examples, but the days-to-day intimidations and abuses that tenants have told me about.

Excuse me for this long reply, but there's ten years plus of anger and experience contained in me...

Background article

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/02/285607.html

more on Corporate Watch website soon

 http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/

There will also be a follow up article.

This should give plenty of background for people fighting transfer. Just look what it is like for those who have already transferred.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284142.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/283995.html

Well, I have to confess, I find it very difficult to read about these housing corporations and what they are doing in Liverpool. It seems too much to bear; perhaps that's the whole point hey? Demoralise us enough and we all acquiesce in the end to anything and everything. And even when we don't actually agree, there doesn't seem a great deal to be done against these corporations, councils, governments etc. There doesn't seem a clear cut way of getting people together for anything anymore. Is it any wonder we are all so demoralised!

But, at the core of all of this, at the core of those riding high on the crest of very big waves, is injustice; social injustice, economic injustice, class injustice, injustice pure and simple. Who is tackling injustice, who is turning a blind eye to injustice, and perhaps most importantly of all, who is making money from injustice? That is the core question to ask, and to ask it thoroughly and tirelessly. There are many more questions to ask.

All RSL's are in league with the devil but Kai Anderson is a proper alien nut case, he makes it all up as he goes along and he is certainly suffering from a paranoid persecution complex.

Is Kai a Sith? Cross back to the light, you suffer from delusion and outdated theorems I 'm afraid. Get yourself a job and do something useful for your community for once.