ISLINGTON

INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS ASSOCIATION

New Deal board member says 'get rid of council tenants'

26th June 2008

Just when you thought that Professor Humphreys' self-appointed cabal over at EC1 New Deal couldn't go any lower (two years ago they expelled democratically-elected community representatives and then abolished elections!) step forward New Deal board member Owen Hart. He has offered a novel solution to the problem's faced by EC1 New Deal's residents, the majority of whom are social housing tenants: simply get rid of them - the tenants that is!

According to Hart, who bought his way onto the Percival Estate, those people in receipt of social housing (i.e. his neighbours) are: "The workless, the feckless, those who do not work".

Most tenants and leaseholders in Islington are happy to live side-byside without any problem, but not Hart. He wants rid of his neighbours, as he told a meeting of property owners in London recently: "Anything that reduces the amount of social housing and transfers social housing into the private sector is good for Islington. Sell the lot of it and don't build anymore".

Where his neighbours, or the 13,000 on Islington's housing waiting lists for that matter, would go after their homes are sold he doesn't specify. Not his problem, presumably. And yet EC1 New Deal sees no contradiction between its stated aim of improving the lives of Finsbury residents (around 60% of whom are social housing tenants), and having an odious little twerp like Owen Hart sitting on its board.

No wonder they appointed themselves members for life, because there was no hope of any of this sorry little shower being reelected in a democratic contest.

05 August 2008 05:03