Mayor blows own trumpet

This is a little late but there are still tickets available for this event on Sunday. Hat tip top Musician union member and Redbridge Mayor, Barbara White.

Extending the "Right to Buy" to Housing Associations and "Pay to Stay".

"Pay to Stay" seems to be finally making the news. This is the speech I made at the UNISON London regional AGM this month, while moving my branches motion on this and "Right to buy". The motion was passed unanimously and will go to the UNISON national delegate conference in June.

"Council, John Gray, speaking as a delegate from Greater London Housing Association branch but who is also a Community NEC member, moving motion 4, on extending the right to buy to Housing associations and the so called “pay to stay”.

Council, I have always suspected that these modern day Tories don’t like, don’t understand and don’t care about working class people but their current plans for social housing certainly proves it.

The Tory plan is simple, it is to make future generations pay for their pre-General election bribes, on extending the right to buy by stealing homes from Councils and making them sell these already scarce and inadequate resources, on the open market to pay for it.

Let us be very clear here. At a time of chronic housing shortage. The Tories are going to make Councils sell their homes, their stock to pay for this discount for Housing association tenants? This cannot be right.

London is most at risk from this. Since it seems, we will be forced to sell our London Council homes to pay for the discount in other parts of the country where there is no Council housing, since they have already been sold off or transferred their homes to housing association. Since they have no Council housing they have nothing to sell.

Council, make no mistake, The Tories are coming to London for your homes and those that should have been let in the future for your children.

This also means that while a number of existing Housing association tenants may feel they have no choice but to buy and take on huge mortgages and communal repair risk, it will mean that their children and everyone else's, will have even less of a chance of obtaining a social home in the future.

Of course many tenants will simply not earn enough money to buy a home in London regardless of discount and will not be allowed a mortgage.

Not only this, but the so called “pay to stay” scheme, which will be compulsory for all Council tenants and probably compulsory for housing associations tenants, will result in double or triple or even more rises in their rents. If you or your family household income is more than £40,000 per year (or £30,00 out of the capital) in London (remember family income would be if you and your partner both work or have grown up children who work) you will have to “Pay-to-Stay” full market rental rates to stay in your home.

This could mean your rent for a 2 bed room flat in inner London increasing from £150 per week to as much as £600 per week or more.

If you don’t pay for “pay-to-stay”, be under no illusions, that you and your family will eventually be evicted and could be thrown on the streets.

Council, we have to oppose and campaign against this attack - and all the other Tory attacks on working people.

We shouldn’t really be that horrified or surprised about all this, since this what Tories do when they are in power.

We have to make the case that secure and affordable housing is a basic human right and an absolute duty of the state to make sure their citizens are decently housed.

Council, please, not only support this motion but join us and campaign together against this recipe for housing misery for our members now and in the future.

Council, I move. 

Proof council cuts hit poorest areas hardest

Hat tip Ravi. "In recent days there has been a storm about the recently announced 2016/17 local government grant settlement from central government. The creation of a new £300m relief fund will mainly be used to help Tory-run councils, like David Cameron’s Oxordshire County Council, with Labour leveling the accusation that this is to buy off Tory MPs.

I will leave it to others to form a view on whether this is fair or not. But this whole storm did get me thinking about the scale of the cuts not just for this year, but over the past few years, since the Tories came to power.

So I grabbed hold of the 2011/12 figures for “council spending power” and compared them to the recently announced 2016/17 figures and worked out the percentage cut in spending power for each council. I picked 2011/12 as a base year this was the first full council financial year the Tories were able to fully influence after being elected.

I decided to look only at the 152 County Councils and Single Tier Councils (e.g. London Boroughs, Unitary Councils, Metropolitan Boroughs etc) as they make up over 93 per cent of all council spending. There are 201 district council but they make only about 7 per cent of total council spending. Hence looking only at the “Upper Tier” councils as this made the analysis more focussed.

The thing I wanted to test was the theory that the most deprived councils were worst hit. So I took a trip over to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) English indices of deprivation for 2015 website. Here I got the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) average score breakdown by council areas and then  used the rank of the average IMD score to plot percentage change in revenue spending power using versus the IMD average score rank.

Below is the very telling plot of this data. Note councils with low ranks on the IMD (those plotted to the left) are the most deprived and those with high ranks on the IMD (those plotted to the right) are the least deprived.

 This graph shows a strong and clear relationship that the councils that are serving the most deprived communities have suffered the largest cuts over the past five years. This very strong relationship is evidenced by the high R² value (or coefficient of determination) of 0.81. A value of 1 would indicate a perfect fit on the line of best fit, and a value of 0 would mean the data does not fit the line in any way. A value of 0.81 shows a strong and clear fit/relationship.

So there you have it: the numbers don’t lie. The poorest and most deprived have suffered the largest percentage council cuts. The poor have been robbed to subsidise the rich.

If you want to check the data and my calculations you can download it here."

The ******* union that works for you (if you are a New Yorker)

      Love this video. Saw it on Facebook again last week. Not sure if language and speech would be in accordance with UNISON rule book?

 :)

(BTW this is a spoof)

"It's the economy, stupid": Sunday Night Live

On the last Sunday of January was the 4th (and best attended so far) "Sunday Night Live" at the Stratford Picture House, E15  The idea is to encourage maverick thinking and get subject experts to debate with the public to better understand our world.

The speaker was Economist and Professor, Stephen Keen, who is credited with being one of the very few to have predicted the 2007 financial crisis and resulting recession.

For those of us who have mortgages or property in London and fear we are in a "bubble" he is not reassuring with his analysis of the Japanese economy, where there has been an ongoing 70% fall in property prices since 1990.

He thinks that the disaster in Japan was a dress rehearsal for 2007 as was the Spanish Civil War for World War 2.

Privatisation of public services has proved to be as equally disastrous. The private sector has to deliver profit in the short term. Private utilities will always tend to run down services and not invest in the future.

The City of London makes money by creating debt. By 1990 corporate debt was exhausted,  so they went looking to create a new and bigger market for private household debt. This led directly to the the collapse in 2007.

Stephen argues that those in charge of capitalism don't actually understand it. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Government debt. Why austerity is so wrong is that if you reduce government spending to reduce this debt while in recession, the private sector loses out.

Jeremy Corbyn's idea about "People's QE" will potentially put money into bank accounts directly to simulate demand and increase consumer prices and increase wages.

He argues that the arch Neo-liberal economist,  Milton Freeman, actually talked sense for once when he argued for "helicopter money" (helicopters throwing money out onto the streets to increase demand). Stephen was one of those who made the case for the $1000 dollar payment to all Australian taxpayers in 2008 to combat recession.

No one now in London under 35 can now buy a house unless they have  wealthy parents. Labour needs to take on the Tory government idea that the economy is just like a family household. Yes, government is often inefficient but the only long term plan that offes hope is to re-industrialise the UK. Let us make things again and trade with other countries.

In response to a question about what should we do with Greece, Stephen argued that we should write off the debt to Greece. The people who lied about the Greek economy are now dead or retired and not the young who are suffering. The Greeks will never be able to pay off these debts and their only hope will be to inflate the economy and to encourage it to grow.

(Next Sunday Night Live will be on  "Housing" on the 28 February)

Custom House for Sadiq Khan as London Labour Mayor

Picture from a cold, wet, windy canvass session this morning in Custom House, West Ham. Lyn Brown MP (and her little Labour attack dog, Cara), Local Councillors and Party activists were out knocking on doors, talking to residents and asking them to support Sadiq as our next London Mayor in May.

Custom House is a Labour heartland but it was still humbling to see the instinctive support we get from so many life long committed supporters.The message we have to get out is that due to PR,  every single vote will count in the May elections.

Newham voters could end up deciding whether or not we have another rich multi-millionaire, old Etonian as London Mayor or a proper Londoner. 

Love Unions Week (and Greater London UNISON AGM results)

This week is "Heart Unions" (8-14 February) in opposition to this Tory Government's fascistic attempts to destroy trade unions via their vile Bill which is currently going through the House of Lords. There will be a Labour Government in the future and I hope it remembers what the Tories have done when we are in power.

Picture is from our UNISON London AGM early this month. Yesterday I got the results from the ballot of Regional delegates as below:-

Regional Convenor
Doolan, Jane                     55
Green, Yvonne                 110  elected

Deputy Regional Convenor
Ashley, April                   48
Lawrence, Conroy          117 elected

Regional Finance Convenor 
Gray, John                      112 elected
Sangarapillai, Vinothan  53      

Regional Publicity Officer
Bentley, Lynn                  Elected unopposed

Regional Equalities Convenor
Baptiste, Elizabeth          Elected unopposed

Regional Young Persons Convenor
Cox, Ashlyn                    Elected unopposed

Ronald Valentine Higgins RIP - Socialist, Footballer, Trade Unionist & War Hero

I was sad to hear yesterday of the death of 92 year old Labour Party loyalist, Ronald Valentine Higgins (his middle name is due to being born on 14 February!).

Ronald had a long and fascinating life as a East End Steelworker, semi-professional football player, war time Lancaster Bomber Gunner, Docker, trade unionist and life long Labour supporter.

I remember meeting him at a Labour Party BBQ on Wanstead flats many years ago and being so impressed by this quiet, friendly, unassuming man, who had done so much in his life for his country and working people.

See the tribute here from the Newham Recorder.

Picture is of Ron supporting a Labour Party stall in Green Street last year and making clear what he believes in. 

RIP Ron and condolences to your family.

Newham United Against Austerity Launch with John McDonnell MP

Picture collage from the successful recent launch of "Newham United Against Austerity" (NUAA) with key note speaker, John McDonnell MP, Labour Shadow Chancellor, who was introduced by West Ham Labour MP Lyn Brown.

Other speakers were Kevin Courtney, the Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Custom House Councillor, Rokhsana Fiaz and Yvonne Green, the Greater London Convenor for the public service union Unison. 

More than 100 people turned up to the launch of a joint trade union and community based campaign against the Government's attempt to starve Newham’s public services of funds and impose austerity upon us. I will post further on John's speech, the other speakers and the ongoing NUAA campaign.

The Ideal London Pub "The Moon Under Water"

Off message but there was a marvellous report this morning on the Radio 4 "Today" programme about 9 February being the anniversary of the article "The Moon Under Water" written by George Orwell in 1946 on his "Ideal Pub".

They got different members of the public to read out the article on what makes the perfect London Pub.

A certain pub chain (owned ironically by a hard right political nutcase) has taken up the theme and a number his pubs use the same fictional name given by this famous left wing and anti fascist writer.

"Orwell stipulated ten key points[3] that his perfect pub in the London area should have (his criteria for country pubs being different, but unspecified):

The architecture and fittings must be uncompromisingly Victorian.

Games, such as darts, are only played in the public bar "so that in the other bars you can walk about without the worry of flying darts".

The pub is quiet enough to talk, with the house possessing neither a radio nor a piano.

The barmaids know the customers by name and take an interest in everyone.

It sells tobacco and cigarettes, aspirins and stamps, and "is obliging about letting you use the telephone".

"[...] there is a snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality of the house), cheese, pickles and [...] large biscuits with caraway seeds [...]."

"Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch—for example, a cut off the joint, two vegetables and boiled jam roll—for about three shillings."

"[...] a creamy sort of draught stout [...], and it goes better in a pewter pot."
 
"They are particular about their drinking vessels at "The Moon Under Water" and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass. Apart from glass and pewter mugs, they have some of those pleasant strawberry-pink china ones. [...] but in my opinion beer tastes better out of china."

"[...] You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden [...] Many as are the virtues of the Moon Under Water I think that the garden is its best feature, because it allows whole families to go there instead of Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone."

Orwell admitted that "to be fair", he did know of a few pubs that almost came up to his ideal, including one that had eight of the mentioned qualities.

The essay finishes as follows:

And if anyone knows of a pub that has draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio, I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or the Railway Arms.