The evil that people (political leaders) do lives after them
The legacy of Margaret Thatcher is ruining lives
When I was an elected councillor in the 1980s there were 15,000 council homes in my borough comprising flats and houses, some on estates that admittedly were not great places but some houses in small groups as well. By the end of my eight year term and after ‘right to buy’ we had only 10,000 and we were left with the flats and had created areas where people who were in the most desperate were trapped effectively in ghettoes. I was an councillor in Margaret Thatcher’s constituency so I saw it all at close quarters. All the best stock was sold off and much of it put out to rent in the private sector. The mixed communities were disappearing and movement was stifled.
I am glad to hear that the new government is going to build social housing (affordable means housing for sale and social means housing for rent) but it’s no good building more local authority housing if the right-to-buy means it is just sold off. As Andy Burnham has said, this must end. As it stands, new homes are sold off often for as quick profit as soon as they are built and the capital income is not used to replace them.
The best communities are mixed. People need flexibility in their housing with the ability to moved from a student flat to a starter home and onwards to a family home and ending in a retirement situation.
Right-to-buy was an evil and wrong headed policy that has devastated communities and stymied our ability to manage and plan for people’s various and changing housing needs. Decades later it is now recognised to be a mistake but the harm inflicted is going to take just as long to undo.
Privatising public utilities is my second evil act of the wicked Thatcher. Pictures of sewage floating down our rivers and the sea appear every day. Our water companies have been raped by corrupt and corpulent profiteers, our taxes stolen for individual benefit and we are left with the effluent and pollution. Water for profit is an oxymoron and another policy that has to go. It will not be enough to sort out the private companies that are incompetent and venal, we should go after the profits stolen from us over the years. There is legislation that takes the proceeds of crime from individuals, we should apply that to companies and get our money back so we can sort out the waterways, deal with the chemicals pouring off the farms and the filth being poured into our waterways. I want our money back!
Oh Frances you are so right! We all are paying such a high price for the wicked Thatcher policies and the corruption of which the water companies and their allowing our sea and rivers to become polluted is a part.
That’s the Cllr Frances Crook that I remember.❤️