Is This Social Cleansing?

Boris is simply watching his backside ahead of the Mayoral Elections in 2012, but that's what happens in a democracy. Ken Livingston would never stoop to such levels would he?

A shame Labour made such a shambles of the economy that they're unable to hold the Government to account.

I have no wish to defend the last Government at all, but I'd be very interested if you could provide just one example of any of their policies that could be described as socialist - as far as I could tell they were all stolen from the Conservatives.

And while you didn't define the unholy mess you refer to, I would point out that the current Economic situation is not unique to the UK and we weren't the first country to suffer from this particular recession.

I'm not saying that New Labour made a great job of handling it - they didn't - but the effects of world economic contraction would have hit this country hard even had the Tories been in charge, and I don't believe they would have made a significantly better job of dealing with it.

This country was, after, all mere hours from bankruptcy and that wasn't due to Government policy decision.

I will respond more fully later on, but Johnson will have two things in mind:

1. A desire to avoid acting as Ken's recruiting sergeant (remember that he was elected on a turnout of 45%).

2. A desire to avoid losing his core vote in outer London boroughs who will fear a mass migration of HB claimants from inner London to their areas.

It must be understood that what is being proposed by Cameron is bad for social cohesion, bad for families and certainly bad for the diverse and socially fraternal communities of Inner London where rich and poor live side by side as opposed to somewhere like Paris where the affluent and fortunate virtually have the centre of the city to themselves whilst the working classes and less fortunate are consigned to the outer ring. Anyone visiting the two cities can notice the vast difference in diversity and multi culturalism that exists in two very different societies.

How can anyone justify the intention to charge 80% of the commercial rents to socially housed tenants having to use the private sector in the future AND to limit their security of tenure to a mere 5 years; even pretend that social housing as we are so familiar with and so proud of in this country is to be anything but discontinued?

How can that be anything other than a policy of political doctrine as opposed to a realistic appraisal of the very real politic of life in a modern society?

In the London Borough of Islington where I live, the local authority rent for a three bedroomed flat is £92 per week. Wherever the council are utilising privatly owned flats to fulfil their statutory obligations through non availability of their own stock, then that average rent rises to £450 a week and therefore huge amounts of Housing Benefit are required to line the pockets of the private sector.

Now how does the argument for selling off housing stock and not replacing it (as doctrinated by the Conservatives since 1983) stack up in the face of that huge added expenditure to local authorities? No more than the decisions by Thatcher & Co to kill off our core industries of steel, coal; ship building and vehicle production and thus hugely increasing the balance of payments deficite through mass importation of basic needs does either I would contend.

So who has really caused this "unholy mess" that Stefano so readily sees as the reasoning behind social cleansing? It's certainly not the future victims of "Dave's" "sorting out" as he describes it, is it!

Well having driven Jason Orange and Gary Barlow (+ his mum!) Take That are no great attraction to me (although Rags and I could have gone to see them together) so I'll wait in no longer and go to football tongigt instead.............. it's safe to come out now boys and girls, and post your predictions to your heart's content!

Interesting comment, maybe the time has come to do some social cleansing of my own.