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.