"Immigrants are not to blame for the housing crisis"

Check out this excellent article by Peter Apps (former Inside Housing magazine). Powerful factual arguments that is a million miles away from far right fake news. 

"As the far right march through the streets of Britain, it is worth reminding ourselves that one of their favourite arguments is a fiction

It has been a scary week in Britain with news websites filling up with images of burned cars, smashed shop windows and angry young men in hoodies in running battles with riot police.

Like most people in the country, the scenes have surprised me. Yes, I could have told you there was a bubbling anger and an increasingly vocal, increasingly scary far right making its presence felt online and off.

But I did not think we were as close as we were to real-life violence on our streets and it does not leave me feeling particularly good about where we are going to go in the coming years, especially if someone like Robert Jenrick (an increasingly expert practitioner of dog-whistle politics) gets to become leader of the opposition.

As has been the case whenever the far right has raised its ugly head out of the miserable pubs, gentlemen’s clubs, golf courses and Reddit threads where it usually lurks, housing is a place it wants to turn the conversation.... Subscribe to Peter’s Substack

Pete is trying to make his journalism pay, so if interested in finding out the truth about immigration and the housing crisis then please subscribe.  It starts from £3.50 per month. But you can read the full article here Immigrants are not to blame for the housing crisis (substack.com)

There is no real link with immigration and rising housing prices. 90% of new social tenancies go to UK citizens not recent immigrants. 81% to white families (in line with the general population).  

Immigrants are amongst the victims of the housing scandal not the cause. That lies fairly and squarely with the previous government's housing policy. 

UNISON London Regional Council: Speakers on Camden Parking Strike; Rise of the New Far Right & Legal measures to fight mental health discrimination at work

I was little late turning up to the Greater London UNISON Regional Council on Thursday, so missed the guest speakers from Camden UNISON on their dispute with Parking Contractors NSL on poverty pay (see UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis, on their picket line). 

However, I did hear a speaker from Hope Not Hate give a thought provoking and deeply disturbing analysis of the rise of a new poplar far right front and neo-Nazi terrorism in the UK (and beyond).  

On the one hand membership of British Nazi and Fascist parties such as the BNP has collapsed but we are now seeing the largest numbers of people in decades on the streets supporting campaigns led by new far right groups. 

The thug and serial convicted criminal ,Tommy Robertson, has a huge social media presence, far in excess of any anti-fascist group. 

The speaker correctly pointed out that we cannot fight modern day fascism with the tactics of the 1980s and simply screaming "NAZI" at people attending marches since they are genuinely angry at the Manchester bombing, is not going to do anything positive. 

We have to work out how to defeat this new social network of individuals, who do not belong to traditional far right political parties but are being radicalised by Nazi websites, here and abroad. 

Going on anti Nazi demos and protests are tactics and not a means to an end. We need to get a better and more effective modern message to counter this threat. 

Final speaker was Ann-Marie Christie from Thompsons solicitors, who since this was World Mental Health day, gave a  practical update on possible employment law and personal injury measures that union reps could use to protect members at work. 

"If you think terrorism is the biggest threat to the West, you need to watch this video

While not pretending that there is not a significant risk let us examine facts not emotion.

- Such as far more people were murdered by terrorism in my youth than now?

- Such as 24 Americans were murdered by terrorists between 2005 and 2015 but there was over 300,000 Americans killed by guns during the same period.

- You were therefore 12000 times more likely to be killed by guns than terrorists

- Last year more Americans were killed by toddlers with guns than by terrorists

- ISIS and the Far Right have the same aim to panic and divide us.  They are all fascists.

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Reflections upon Breivik and our own Far Right

Picture is from the front page of this month’s “Searchlight” (the anti-fascist magazine). It’s just over a year since the massacre in Norway and the verdict on Breivik is due out on Thursday. Searchlight has commissioned a number of articles on about him and the Far Right. Some very good (some a little odd).

It’s clear to me that Breivik is clinically insane. You don’t go around shooting children at close range while smiling and laughing without being deranged. It is also clear though that he knows the difference between right and wrong. This means in Britain that he would probably be found guilty of murder. The law in Norway is different and he might be found to be not responsible for his actions. Either way I cannot believe he will ever be released.

Searchlight make the valid point that in this country while we are concerned with the threat of violence from Islamic extremists we seem complacent about the threat from the Far Right. I’m sure this is true. There will be similar egotistic sociopath morons out there in our green and pleasant land who think that the only thing that Breivik done wrong was just not to kill enough people.

Hat’s off to the people and government of Norway for the way they have dealt with this appalling crime.

UNISON NDC 12: Kicking the Far Right out of the Union

During the rules debate on Thursday afternoon I was really pleased that Conference finally agreed to change membership rules that will enable the union to expel existing members of far right political parties and refuse admission.

(It did help on this occasion that members of the People's Front of Judea finally showed enough gumption to publicly tell the Judean People's Front to stop their completely untruthful sectarian scaremongering and squabbling).