THEY ARE ALL AT IT!

HSBC scandal,

Riverside scandal

and a warning
from Holland

Another day, another bank scandal. This time it is HSBC`s   Swiss bank and its wealthy clients. The tax they haven`t paid and their  massive assets hidden away in secret  vaults  has caused outrage.

There has been outrage too about a scandal equally as bad involving  a housing association. The scandal involved a prison sentence for fraud, a suitcase full of cash and losses of 2.7 billion euros  from currency bets that went wrong.

That  housing association was  Vestia, Holland`s largest association and details of the scandal are now starting to emerge in this country, says Jules Birch in an article in the influential social housing magazine, Inside Housing.

Jules Birch draws some very  serious conclusions from the scandal. He says that the present trend of developments in British housing associations are becoming a mirror image of the very questionable Dutch developments prior to the Vestia scandal.

The Dutch lessons, he says are: Be alert to these equally questionable British developments and be aware of  the scandal they can lead to.

Here at home there are scandals of a different kind involving  Riverside Housing Association of Liverpool, the largest landlord in the Carlisle area and one of the biggest  housing association in the country.

 Riverside`s latest scandal comes in an article  in the  association`s  current newsletter which is sent to all   its 50,000 tenants and leaseholders, including  an estimated sixty in Longtown, now suffering their third winter without  adequate heat in their homes... they cannot afford proper heat because of Riverside` dodgy boilers. Many of the sixty are at the end of their tether and can take no more.

The  newsletter article was headed: “Putting an end to Winter Deaths”.

The writer says this”As temperatures continue to plummet in this first week in February and during the final days of the Cold Homes Week campaign, it’s as good a time as any to share my thoughts on how and why we are tackling fuel poverty. Our bid to combat barriers to keeping warm has been on our agenda for a few years now.”

The tenants were outraged at such grossly insensitive comments. Jimmy Robb, leading the  fight against Riverside  to get properly heated homes spoke for the sixty tenants and said:”The nerve of them.”

The nerve of Riverside too, in advertisements it has been running every week for two years in  the Cumberland News, Carlisle.

The advertisements proclaim that Riverside is”transforming lives and re-vitalising neighbourhoods.”

That is rubbish, say Riverside`s sixty  freezing Longtown tenants at the end of their tether. “Yes, our lives have been transformed by Riverside. But not  in the way  the Riverside advertisements claim. The claim is outrageous.”

Outrageous or not, the advertisements  suddenly stopped appearing this month. Riverside may have pulled the plug on them, Or the Cumberland News may have pulled the plug.

The advertisements claimed that Riverside is supporting (presumably, financially) the page of the Cumberland News where the advertisements appear,  the district news page.

Possibly, the Cumberland News has come to the conclusion that it is just not good policy to have the support of Riverside on one page  of the newspaper and to have articles criticising Riverside`s shameful record at Longtown on another page.

Whatever the reason: Good riddance to the Riverside page!