Rant or Reality?
Mike Lane | 13.11.2007 01:37 | Liverpool
It is now three years since I was nearly kidnapped or mugged by a large criminal family that lives and still lives in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool. A giant regeneration gentrification area. You stalwarts who still bother to log onto Indymedia will probably remember the postings that I put onto the site three years ago about this incident?
Looking back in retrospect I am convinced that these animals were going to kidnap me and probably murder me. Three years posting leaflets called the Whistleblower, a leaflet designed to try and inform the so called regeneration community about how the council with the help of Liverpool's media i.e. the Liverpool Echo, Radio Merseyside’s Roger Phillips and all the other civic agencies were lying to them about regenerating their community when in reality they were going to boot most of the resident, especially the poor socially deprived ones, out of the area altogether into prepared ghettos in other parts of Merseyside miles away from the inner and city centre areas.
You know I have met homeowners who’s houses are now boarded up who were shunted to the top of housing association lists above the homeless who were on those same housing association lists and are still on them. Yes they gave these homeowner £40,000 to £60,000 for their houses (and lets not forget the lying governments 4,000 relocation fee) and then to further encourage them to leave they gave them the keys to the best social housing possible when there are thousands of poor people rotting in shitty £125 per week rented private landlord properties and temporary housing.
After spending a year running the gauntlet of intimidation and threats and my car being petrol bombed outside my flat by members of this criminal family and their criminal friends I was eventfully moved right out of the area by my housing association for my own safety. Oh, I forgot to mention, I had to park my replacement car over a mile away for the period until I left in case these animals blew that up to.
What did the hundreds of thousands of Whistleblower leaflets and SLP political leaflets I posted in the area achieve or amount to? Yes you guessed right. The whole five-year project, if that’s the right word to describe it, never amounted to a hill of fucking beans. And you now the irony of all this is, the very close in which I now live on a poverty stricken housing association estate built right out in the sticks is, only four doors up from me is a demolition homeowner who got £60,000 for his house and was given the keys to a bungalow. The other day he told me that he drinks himself to sleep at night with a bottle of whisky because he can’t stand the anti-social kids who live in the houses that surround his bungalow. I don’t experience the same hassle as him because my rented property is in a part of the close that the kids don’t hang around in. Lucky me!
I live in a tiny bungalow and as a result of the attempted kidnapping and intimidation I experienced in Edge Hill I have made my tiny rented bungalow in this new poverty-stricken area into a prison, not a prison that you can’t escape from, but rather a fortress that you can’t get into. Steel bars on the front door and back windows an alarm system that is activated even of a night and locks on all the inner doors that I religiously lock every night before I go to bed. I have a machete and commando knife at my side right through the evening and when I am in bed.
After twelve months of living here I had a massive heart attack and nearly died, fuck it, I don’t know if what happened to me helped bring this about, but there is no history of heart problems in my family.
Fuck it man, I’m really pissed off at the moment, fifty-three years old and totally disillusioned with direct activism. The state are bastards. Central and local government are very devious and clever they just put certain structures into place within communities that cause an evolutionary process that favours them. Fuck me these bastards can do what ever they like with people. Social engineering! It’s really fucking scary
Oh, just a final observation. You probably know about the Lady Elizabeth Pasco? They call her the Edge Lane woman. The women who has stopped the Liverpool City Council from demolishing 2,000 houses in the Edge Hill area twice in the High Court. Do you think she will win? She won’t you know. They will leave her house demolish all the others and build loads of luxury flats around hers, it will be like piggy in the middle. They’ve done it before. Want proof of this? Next time you pass the back of the Royal Hospital take a look at the old solitary house within the hospital grounds. The old guy who lives there stopped the council from demolishing his house years ago. His house was just one of 200 that used to be in a street in the area before the hospital was build.
All the best Mike lane
Looking back in retrospect I am convinced that these animals were going to kidnap me and probably murder me. Three years posting leaflets called the Whistleblower, a leaflet designed to try and inform the so called regeneration community about how the council with the help of Liverpool's media i.e. the Liverpool Echo, Radio Merseyside’s Roger Phillips and all the other civic agencies were lying to them about regenerating their community when in reality they were going to boot most of the resident, especially the poor socially deprived ones, out of the area altogether into prepared ghettos in other parts of Merseyside miles away from the inner and city centre areas.
You know I have met homeowners who’s houses are now boarded up who were shunted to the top of housing association lists above the homeless who were on those same housing association lists and are still on them. Yes they gave these homeowner £40,000 to £60,000 for their houses (and lets not forget the lying governments 4,000 relocation fee) and then to further encourage them to leave they gave them the keys to the best social housing possible when there are thousands of poor people rotting in shitty £125 per week rented private landlord properties and temporary housing.
After spending a year running the gauntlet of intimidation and threats and my car being petrol bombed outside my flat by members of this criminal family and their criminal friends I was eventfully moved right out of the area by my housing association for my own safety. Oh, I forgot to mention, I had to park my replacement car over a mile away for the period until I left in case these animals blew that up to.
What did the hundreds of thousands of Whistleblower leaflets and SLP political leaflets I posted in the area achieve or amount to? Yes you guessed right. The whole five-year project, if that’s the right word to describe it, never amounted to a hill of fucking beans. And you now the irony of all this is, the very close in which I now live on a poverty stricken housing association estate built right out in the sticks is, only four doors up from me is a demolition homeowner who got £60,000 for his house and was given the keys to a bungalow. The other day he told me that he drinks himself to sleep at night with a bottle of whisky because he can’t stand the anti-social kids who live in the houses that surround his bungalow. I don’t experience the same hassle as him because my rented property is in a part of the close that the kids don’t hang around in. Lucky me!
I live in a tiny bungalow and as a result of the attempted kidnapping and intimidation I experienced in Edge Hill I have made my tiny rented bungalow in this new poverty-stricken area into a prison, not a prison that you can’t escape from, but rather a fortress that you can’t get into. Steel bars on the front door and back windows an alarm system that is activated even of a night and locks on all the inner doors that I religiously lock every night before I go to bed. I have a machete and commando knife at my side right through the evening and when I am in bed.
After twelve months of living here I had a massive heart attack and nearly died, fuck it, I don’t know if what happened to me helped bring this about, but there is no history of heart problems in my family.
Fuck it man, I’m really pissed off at the moment, fifty-three years old and totally disillusioned with direct activism. The state are bastards. Central and local government are very devious and clever they just put certain structures into place within communities that cause an evolutionary process that favours them. Fuck me these bastards can do what ever they like with people. Social engineering! It’s really fucking scary
Oh, just a final observation. You probably know about the Lady Elizabeth Pasco? They call her the Edge Lane woman. The women who has stopped the Liverpool City Council from demolishing 2,000 houses in the Edge Hill area twice in the High Court. Do you think she will win? She won’t you know. They will leave her house demolish all the others and build loads of luxury flats around hers, it will be like piggy in the middle. They’ve done it before. Want proof of this? Next time you pass the back of the Royal Hospital take a look at the old solitary house within the hospital grounds. The old guy who lives there stopped the council from demolishing his house years ago. His house was just one of 200 that used to be in a street in the area before the hospital was build.
All the best Mike lane
Mike Lane
e-mail:
mickjlane@btinternet.com
Homepage:
http://www.whistleblowernstemp.com
Comments
Hide the following 10 comments
Policy is destructive and divides communities
13.11.2007 10:21
Nov 13 2007
by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post
Housing Market Renewal is a deliberately misleading title.
It does the very opposite of the basics of a free market, the state through councils and housing associations uses vast public funds to purchase up properties and lands to take them off the market.
These public sector agencies then deliberately move people out and board up the area, creating a blight of dereliction.
The remaining owner occupiers are bought out at depressed prices and the few are forced out up by the abuse of compulsory purchase powers.
In areas designated for degradation and demolition, the land is then handed over to a combination of housing associations and one of four national housing builders who have been give a monopoly over the purchase of all significant land sites in their quarter of the inner city.
This deliberate restriction works against local builders and consumer choice.
Outside the inner city, planners obstruct the redevelopment of areas for housing.
Thus we have vast areas of blight outside the city being deliberately withheld from private housing development.
In the current three years, the council intends to demolish 4,000 homes forcing 3,000 families on to the ever-growing housing waiting lists.
This policy we are told has community support but when discussed at the Housing committee, press and public were excluded as it was “confidential”.
The demolition coalition of Lib-Dem and Labour councillors were afraid to debate this municipal vandalism in public.
They claim this policy leads to rises in home ownership.
Buying houses at £70,000 to £120,000 to then demolish then seems a pretty expensive way of doing it.
Who in these working class communities can afford smaller homes starting at £120,000?
In the words of Jane Kennedy MP, it is “social cleansing”.
I challenged for evidence that home ownership rises were not more likely due to private landlords selling their houses to capitalise on rising house prices, but council officers could not bring forward any statistical evidence.
Their policies might as well be driven by reading tea leaves.
In Pathfinder areas, people are paid compensation but the Joseph Rowntree Trust has shown that the average owner occupier will be worse off by £30,000 after the enforced move.
This policy is destructive, divides communities and creates a sinister cartel of council, housing associations and national house builders profiteering by forcing thousands out of their homes abusing hundreds of millions of pounds of our taxes.
David Bartlett
can you
13.11.2007 13:03
Sconna
Are you saying
13.11.2007 13:13
Beefy
flip side
13.11.2007 16:53
squishy
take it easyMike
15.11.2007 20:47
But Mike keep yourself well - I know its easy to say - with all thats been happening. But you should take it easy.
I think people are trying to fight in the own way. But I would say -if you didn't get much support -its probably becasue people were scared. becasue I know a lot of people who really respect what you done Mike - Were I work in old swan and elsewhere. So I don't think its been in vain. Because you exposed the bullshit and the moneygrabbers and thats a brave thing to do and you should be proud of yourself.You don't alwasy know who is on your side becasue its not always obvious.
Take it easy Mike
Dazza
dazza
The Merseyside Scene
16.11.2007 03:11
The police know who runs what area, down to the little runners most likely to murder a child.
Bottom line, if these thugs keep it all in-house, (working class cadavers only) and tidy up the forensics, they won't be touched. Over 30% of crime reported will not see a cop turn up. On some estates in Liverpool even a machete being waved won't herald any great commotion or even a search of the premises.
All this means is the we have people now so contemptuous of the UK law and used to challenging it, that more policeman are being killed. A few have been stabbed in Liverpool, run over, and shot at!
You have try to know what you can change, know what might change and also what will never change. I've been where you are to some extent. The corruption in some cases is way above us. A whistleblower can only blow the whistle and hope someone comes running. We need trained experts, judiciary and accountants to assume office in tackling the mafias.
At the point of death threats - I'd back down for the sake of those around me. If your putting a name to stuff you have to be careful as 'T.I.L.' (as we now say) 'This Is Liverpool'.
It's like the I.R.A /U.D.A teamed up on cocaine in some parts.
There are plenty more fish to fry and the various families (most gangs are family based) who can pop you or me with ease, are on a bit of a lottery run themselves that could end in a shotgun to the head. You cannot make a name in Liverpool in the capers without attracting lead. The nature of the game for the working class participants means people gain reps, which can rebound at any time.
They kill each other - and snort themselves to death and cheat on each other habitually. They have 50 years to pray they are not rumbled or their kids don't get a taste for the gear they were on in the womb, and in the sac.
.
In a few years time, when we have some anti mafia judge set loose in Liverpool, I'm sure Mike, that some of the deals you've rumbled will be there.
Another tradition we always had in Liverpool was Christianity, and on that note I pray that your health improves Mr Lane and that God blesses you and your own.
Puppet Master of Insurgency
The comments to this are
16.11.2007 21:32
James Jones
we
16.11.2007 23:47
Mapmen
no
17.11.2007 10:10
oi mapmen
It's class war - plain and simple!
26.11.2007 19:09
Yes it's been pretty obvious that demolition of working class people's homes and poorer neighbourhoods was designed to reduce the supply of housing, which led to more people on the council housing waiting list. It was also designed to boost house prices. The insane idea that you make rent paying tenants become mortgage paying home owners is plainly untrue, all you do by demolishing their homes is clear land for houses for sale. However it's well known that 30% plus of the inner city luxury flats are empty, that's an over supply. That's what happens when you leave housing provision to the free market, totally unregulated and out of step with the social needs of people, where profit comes first.
What councillor Richard Kemp expressed as Lib-Dem chair of housing and while simultaneously a paid housing consultant (conflict of interests you'd think?) to the council during a presentation to the council was that there was an over supply of council housing, this was purely misrepresentation of the facts, most of it was boarded up, tenants were being kept on the waiting list because the council was reducing the supply of council housing. Staff were being told to encourage those applying to the waiting list to apply for housing association property instead and put them off applying for council housing, I know because I saw it personally in operation, go in with a list of 20 odd empty houses in an area you want to live, and you got the following "transferred to a housing association" or "long term vacant", then housing allocation policy changed to what could best be described as a pathetic "a lucky dip system", you bid for an empty house. That one man, Richard Kemp, led the push for the abolition of council housing across Liverpool, what wasn't privatised (through Stock Transfers) or given away to housing associations was demolished, like Gillmoss, housing only built thirty years ago and which were far better and more roomy than any of the privately built rabbit hutches that are thrown up in months to replace them.
Demolishing not bricks and mortar but people's homes, neighbourhoods and communities with whatever lame excuses or lies they could brainwash a community with, it's for space for the trams or to make way for a new Tesco's. There are now no tower blocks in the North East part of Liverpool, because the Housing Action Trust (HAT) has demolished all of them. It was the so called 'moderate' Labour party in 1992 led by Harry Rimmer, which convinced tenants that the only way they'd get improved -they didn't- was to vote for stock transfer to the Liverpool HAT. However those same tower blocks in Everton were first let run down, after clearing out tenants, then used to house refugees and asylums seekers in, now they've upgraded and were being advertised as luxury apartment blocks, there are tower blocks around sefton park which have luxury penthouse suites on the top floors.
Working class people have been and continue to be trampled upon in Liverpool like never before, yet until we come together 'collectively' we're going to lose evermore. So perhaps when we put aside our egos, self interests, everyman/woman for 'emselves and big hero's hats and think of the 'greater good' of working class people in Liverpool we'll then be respected and listened to, taken notice of and maybe become the political force that defends our rights collectively and then politically promotes our collective interests.
Housing is now -sadly- a done deal.
It took the Lib-Dem council nine years to do what they said they'd do in 1998 (after the election of course) ie that the council "would no longer be a landlord."
The new challenges will be:
Education and health service privatisation: Which is now the new front for us to defend. The Liverpool Royal Hospital is going to end up demolished and rebuilt as a smaller privately (PFI) funded hospital with fewer beds and services - if we the public don't show and express our opposition. There can either be a public and collective battle to defend a publicly funded NHS or it will end up being transferred patient by patient, bed by bed, ward by ward, service by service over to the penny pinching profiteers who have carved up 'our' council housing. We should be alert to this right now.
Kai Andersen