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Return of the needy
• THE discussion in the Tribune about “affordable housing” – in reality “social housing” – has taken a rather odd turn.
Social housing has usually meant rented accommodation for the needy or the socially useful. Up to 10 years ago “needy” had the look of an historical term. New Labour, following Thatcherite policies, has made the term a contemporary description. The term “socially useful” is taken to imply people like nurses, firefighters and similar people.
But those earning the national minimum wage are mostly usefully employed. They earn their money “fair and square” to use a phrase used by one writer who suggested he not merely has a right to buy expensive accommodation but to keep those in “affordable housing” out of his sight.
Is he suggesting that those on the national minimum wage are a different breed from him?
It was also suggested that a husband-and-wife team were to be congratulated because they turned a former factory into “luxury flats”. It might have been more worthwhile if they had turned luxury flats into a factory.
It is difficult to recall that London was once a great manufacturing city.
Property prices do not have to follow the laws of physics. What goes up does not necessarily have to come down. But property prices have dropped with a resounding clunk in the USA, and, nearer to home, in Ireland.
It was suggested those buying property in Islington were responsible for a commercial lift-off. Where is the evidence? Far from “vibrant” shops opening, what most of us have noticed are shops, in particular bookshops, closing at an alarming rate.
The current council was sneered at as shamefully semi-socialist. Some of us look forward to a totally shameless socialist council, one which will treat your Thatcherite correspondents the way they should be treated: like ordinary council-tax paying citizens.
Islington, and the rest of London, not to say the UK, ought to be run in the interests of all.
SEAN MCGORAN
Respect, Renewal, Islington
Tollington Way
N7
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