MRS THORNBERRY M.P. HAS AS PROUD LEGACY, TOO!

Next time, Emily,

tweet against

Riverside`s

White Van Man

The Prime Minister  today joined the debate about Emily Thornberry`s White Van Man at Question Time in the House of Commons, a week after Mrs Thornberry`s apparently  snobbish tweet about the White Van parked in Rochester and the St George`s flags  behind.

This White Van Man tweet cost  the M.P. her job in  the shadow cabinet and is now part of Mrs. Thornberry`s political legacy . But among the tenants and leaseholders of housing associations, Mrs Thornberry deserves another and  much better legacy, one she should be proud of.

This  legacy is something the commentators seem to have forgotten. Hopefully,  this new  legacy will  never be forgotten, particularly by the tenants and leaseholders of that   heavily-criticised organisation,  Riverside Housing Association of Liverpool.

Mrs Thornberry  was one of the first influential people to attack Britain`s  bossy and unaccountable housing associations, which are a law only to themselves. Mrs Thornberry wanted to make housing associations  more democratic and accountable.

Mrs Thornberry`s attacks were not much  different from  those being made today by  the unhappy tenants and leaseholders of Riverside, and made particularly by the tenants` own community organisation, Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation.

Mrs Thornberry who is Labour M.P. for Islington South and Finsbury  did much better in her attacks than the Federation.  She turned the attacks into a private member`s bill in the House of Commons .It attracted widespread cross-party support among M.P.`s. Sadly, the bill failed to be approved.

But despite that failure, her attacks  are specially remembered in Carlisle among the complaining Riverside tenants and leaseholders and in Longtown by the freezing Riverside tenants unable to afford to heat their homes.

At the time of  her private members bill, Mrs  Thornberry told the influential social housing publication, Inside Housing, that MPs and local government councillors had become ‘incredibly frustrated' when dealing with tenants' complaints about housing association landlords.

‘Most MPs just feel that tenants' opinions are not being listened to. I have estates in my constituency where tenants are pulling their hair out. Some associations are much better than others. Some are very good in 90 per cent of the work they do but in the other 10 per cent they are dreadful.'

Ms Thornberry said she was keen on creating a ‘nuclear button' that would force associations to hand control of estates to rival landlords if they failed to listen to tenants. “That would mean that the main body of tenants would be listened to,”she added.

The White Van Man of Rochester will soon be forgotten But there are large number of white vans in Carlisle and Longtown that cannot be forgotten. They are Riverside vans doing Riverside business.

Mrs Thornberry will soon be back  to sending tweets and, hopefully, renewing her attacks on housing associations. She might choose these Riverside vans for her first tweet.

And if she choses to create a a critical tweet about those vans, as she did about the White Van in Rochester, there would be no shadow cabinet job to worry  about  and the tenants and  leaseholders of Riverside  would be delighted.

So tweet again, Emily.

SPINNING TO A MERSEY BEAT

Do You Want

To Know

a Secret?

                             Mersey Beat 1961....THE BEATLES

It has been a  busy week for spin doctors.

And it has been a busy week for those of us who want to know the truth behind  what  the spin doctors tell us.

No spin doctors have worked harder this week than those with a Mersey  beat. They are  working their spin on those of us  who are simple enough to believe that their  Liverpool housing association is some semi-benevolent organisation motivated mainly by charitable aims.

Housing associations are no such thing. We now have it confirmed that housing associations are in fact  nothing more than  mainly business companies, motivated increasingly by making a profit. And despite what the spin doctors tell us, that is now an undeniable fact.

The spin doctors with the Mersey  beat are part of the massive Riverside Housing Association,  which has 50,000 homes, many of them in  the Carlisle area.

For many months, it has been clear that Riverside, with its recent rocketing extra charges to tenants and leaseholders in the Carlisle district  and its increasingly bossy ways, is in fact  mostly a business organisation  making a profit.

Up to recent years, Riverside, like the other housing associations has been propped up by government  grants and subsidies. Now Riverside and the others are being  increasingly propped up by  business  activities.

In the past year there has been a sharp rise in these business activities...such a sharp rise that experts are now talking about “a tipping point”. This is the point where housing associations become more dependent on  profits than  government cash.

One expert - Steve Douglas, a partner at consultancy organisation Altair - put it this way this week in the influential social housing magazine, Inside Housing. He wrote: “I think what we have seen this year is the tipping point, away from grant and public subsidy to underpin development to commercial activity.”

Tipping points of course lead to a complete change of balance and with  this a complete change of direction. The indications are that  this change will lead to the complete privatisation of housing associations.

And then, more tipping points?

And then, where?

HOUSING THE STASI FACTOR ?

Balloons go up in

Berlin while

Longtown waits

Balloons along the former Wall...BERLIN TWO DAYS AGO

for another 

balloon...

Celebrations  a couple of days ago marked the end of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago and with it the end of a hated  communist regime  based on spying and disruption.

Questions about that regime persist in Germany, even today.

Remarkably, here in Cumbria questions persist about the suspected spying and disruptive activities of a housing organisation, activities that many critical people say has something in common with that hated German regime.

The questions in Germany are about the activities of a government secret police, the Stasi which operated  in  East Germany on the other side of the  Wall.

The questions in Cumbria- in Longtown and Carlisle- are about  the activities of the giant Riverside Housing Association, one of the biggest in Britain, owning 50,000 homes.

These questions had to be faced by Dean Butterworth, the Carlisle Riverside boss  at his recent Longtown public meeting.

Mr Butterworth called the meeting to explain more about his organisation`s controversial solar heating  in the town, installed more than two years ago.

Mr Butterworth brought along an expert  to talk about a new report on the solar heating and its dodgy boilers.  Then he had to face a storm of his tenants`criticisms about what had followed from the solar panels and the dodgy boilers:   ice box tenants` homes and rocketing fuel bills which tenants cannot afford.

Then came another storm  of criticism for Mr Butterworth to deal with.  It was about the suspected spying and disruptive activities by a man who has previously been referred to as the Man from Riverside.

Mr. Butterworth`s critics  recalled that The Man from Riverside along with a colleague (describing himself as an electrician) attended two earlier meetings of the Longtown tenants.

What happened at those two earlier meetings was very baffling.

The Man from Riverside offered to help  the tenants to set up a tenants` action group. Then the Man from Riverside wanted the tenants to help him to “clean up Riverside.”

Then the Man from Riverside spoke about £250,000 in grants that he has at his disposal  to help tenants` groups.

The electrician colleague of the Man from Riverside talked about “ a scam” involving the solar panels and that he was being disciplined by Riverside for exposing that scam.

A few days later, the Man from Riverside was spotted trailing one of the Longtown tenants` leaders outside an Asda  supermarket and then inside the supermarket.

Why the Man from Riverside acted in this menacing and bizarre way is a mystery.

It was almost as big a mystery as the reaction of Mr Butterworth at his meeting during the storm of questions about the Man from Riverside.

Mr Butterworth said he knew nothing about  the Man from Riverside.

And when Mr Butterworth was handed  the printed visiting card of the Man from Riverside which gave his name, gave his job with a Riverside organisation and  gave his address as that of Riverside headquarters in Liverpool, Mr Butterworth still said he knew nothing about him.

Mr Butterworth is a member of the Riverside governing board. He is paid £85,000 a year plus a car to do that job.

Back to Berlin.There they celebrated the 25 years since end of the Berlin Wall with hundreds of balloons.

In Longtown, there are no celebrations. But tenants are wondering about Riverside`s balloon.

Will that go up too?

THE HEART OF THE MATTER:TO HEAT OR TO EAT?

PAUL`S SPEECH TO M.P`S  URGES  HELP 

FOR FREEZING TENANTS

Student Paul Dill (here) takes the  plight of  Longtown`s freezing tenants to the heart of Westminster and urges M.P`s to help.

Twenty-year-old Paul is now hoping that  this appeal - in a speech he is giving in a House of Commons committee  room - will speed up an end of the tenants` two year  struggle to get Riverside Housing Association to face up to  its responsibilities to its tenants suffering in their ice-box homes.

Paul is a supporter of  Fuel Poverty Action, a national  group  campaigning against the injustice of cold homes.

He joined a Fuel Poverty Action London demonstration about fuel poverty , together with about 100 other campaigners from all over the country.They lobbied M.P.s outside the House of Commons and  then addressed them  in the committee room.

Paul is in his second  year at Lancaster University studying computer science and is also keen member of the Longtown tenants`campaigning group, Longtown Action for Heat.

In  his speech to the M.P.`s, Paul related  the story  of Riverside`s solar panels on the roofs of its tenants` homes and the dodgy boilers that went with them.

He told of the failure of a protesting petition, and the failure of complaints and protests to Riverside and to local councillors about the suffering caused by these dodgy boilers which produce heat  which no one can afford.

Paul also related the story of how his own family  was suffering. 

He said:

“My nana and grandad are tenants. They did not want the solar heating system in their home. But like every else they were forced to take it and threatened with no landlord repairs if they didn`t. 

"Now, because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly, 
they have to make a choice between warmth or food.”

Back home in Longtown, Paul had this to say: “I was very impressed by all the speeches and by the way my speech was received. 

"Everyone was very interested and offered  help and suggestions. I think that  by drawing attention of M.P`s to the awful plight of the tenants I may have done something to help them.”

Jimmy Robb, Chairman of Longtown Action for Heat praised Paul for his efforts. He said:

"He has done a wonderful job at Westminster in bringing the issues to a national level. We feel sure some good will come from it”.