When and why did ED become so poncey?

[mockney piers]

From what I can see (and of course given the limits of the primary evidence) this is a topic that's hugely open to historical, social and socio-geographic interpretation.

I'd be loathe to present anything from history as fact in a law court.

I've seen tudor historians (not literally, my beard may be going grey, but I'm not THAT old) practically come to blows over whether Elizabethan foreign policy was a work of genius by a canny strategist or merely reactive expediency in a desperate bid to hold on to a shaky thrown.

This topic is vast by comparison.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

The problem is that mainstream history, is the history of the victor, and in the cases of the African slave trade and colonisation, a western view of the history of that time, may not be as accurate as we would like to believe.

The bottom line is that the descendants of the victims of the slave trade are on the whole still living in poverty, while the descendants of the perpetrators of the slave trade are still living in mansions.

This was a crime against humanity, as was a lot of what happened under colonisation as late as the 1950's, so we should shut up and pay up because, although my class was also victimised for hundreds of years before and during the time of the slave trade, we have lived charmed lives (off their backs) in comparison with the descendants of the victims in the past 50 years.

[*Bob*]

Indeed.

All the history I was taught is no doubt hopelessly out of date now. Not that I can remember any of it anyway.

[ghostlymaiden]

You cannot blame the ordinary people of Britain for the horrors of slavery. The people who were at fault eg the monarchy and the aristocracy ultimately, are now still living in absolute luxury whilst the ordinary working classes are the ones who are forced to change and adapt their lives to the mass immigration which occured from the 1950's onwards. I am one of the very first people to say that people from the former commonwealth and asylum seekers from war torn nation states deserve a home in Britain, but the way the ruling classes have so blatantly disregarded certain inner city predominantly working class and white neighbourhoods to supply the demand for the newcomers and the social housing needed is a travesty. In Peckham, a whole generation of people have literally abandoned the area because they no longer feel as though they are able to live in a place which no longer feels like home. You cannot blame them for that or accuse them of racism when all of this stems directly back to the greed and oppurtunism which the exploitative ruling classes put on other nations as well their own people. People who live in other areas cannot judge in my opinion either. It's great looking down from the ivory tower and making presumtious claims about whether a whole group of people are racists or not. You cannot pass blame onto people who have on the whole been loyal citizens and hard workers, indeed the backbone to this country over many centuries. It's about time the blame for all of this were passed onto the people who started it, or at least their descendents. I think if dispersal of social housing into wealthier areas is not carried out over the years to come, we are sitting on a time bomb in areas such as Peckham. Social housing should be in every part of London and not just in certain poorer areas.

[mockney piers]

"mainstream history, is the history of the victor" Well, perhaps the lazy stuff that's trotted out in secondary school humanities lessons, or GCSEs.

Academic history (as opposed to the weird nonsense put out by neocon think-tanks) has very much leant towards revisionism for a good half century now. Whether that's reassessing colonialism or reassessing the view of the ancient world bequeathed to us by the Romans; your statement should be consigned to the same historical paper basket that that view of history currently resides in.

[Brendan]

We must be careful of applying our own political prejudices to how history should be interpreted. One has to try to be as unattached as possible. Difficult to do though as where else can we see the world from except from out of our own eyes?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

When I was living in Elephant & Castle, I was fighting to stop the council from selling off the few green bits to developers for yuppie flats. The council said that it was because the Heygate and Aylsbury residents needed re-housing and the developers would provide 30% as 'affordable' units (not all of them actually did this and are upset planning permission for further developments was not granted!). At the time I asked why, the green leafy bits of Dulwich couldn't be bricked up, instead of the tiny patches of green our kids played on.

The cause of the immigration is the same as the cause of our lack of affordable housing.

The elite class, i.e monarchy, heads of multi-national corporations, land developers and their puppets in Government treat us all as dispensable cogs in their machine. The working class were seen as proud and hardworking, while they needed our labour. When they found it cheaper to get their labour intensive work done abroad they didn't even wave goodbye. We then became surplus to requirements, and were told that if we didn't want to join the service industries (including the intellectual service industries such as law) then we should all be ASBO'd and demonised!

The city types were seen as virtuous, despite making money from the sweat of other people's brows, and the working class were mocked and called chavs for not 'keeping up'.

Some solutions:

Land reform - everyone gets a bit and people with more than they need get taxed on it. Bring back local rates attached to the price of your house, with no discounts for second homes. If you have one in the country and one on my bloody (old) estate, you pay twice.

Make the heads of corporations personally liable for the actions of the corporation instead of letting them hide behind the corporations legal personality - at the moment it is considered a legal entity but can only be fined, not imprisoned.

Make donations to political parties illegal, and only allow them to charge for membership, which must be the same for every party!

re-engage the disengaged in politics by decentralising power and giving them a real say on what happens in their area.

Also change the policy on council housing. At the moment central government takes all rents and gives the council back a proportion of them. They do not allow the council to use capital receipts from house sales to build more council properties and they are not allowed to borrow to build them. We need to create a level playing field with housing associations (who get grants from central govt from the council rents money collected) and allow council's to meet their statutory duty.

We also need to stop landlords being able to provide a bowl of cornflakes in the morning for their tenants, calling it a hostel and then charging up to ?370 per week per tenant per room, paid for from housing benefit, which forces the tenant to remain on benefits cos they would have to pay the rent if they got a job (I doubt even you guys could pay that much rent a week)!

[macroban]

> When I was living in Elephant & Castle, I was fighting to stop the council from selling off the few green bits to developers for yuppie flats. The council said that it was because the Heygate and Aylsbury residents needed re-housing and the developers would provide 30% as 'affordable' units (not all of them actually did this and are upset planning permission for further developments was not granted!). At the time I asked why, the green leafy bits of Dulwich couldn't be bricked up, instead of the tiny patches of green our kids played on.

I believe the reason is the Dulwich Estate Management Scheme approved by the Chancery Division following the introduction of the Leasehold Reform Act.

Of more immediate interest to us are the plans to reduce the amount of social housing on the East Dulwich Estate.

[mockney piers]

"Land Reform - everyone gets a bit."

China did a limited experiment with this, as currently chinese farmers are leased the land every five years. THe authorities listened to a lot of arguments from the west about how private ownership engendered long term investment and ultimately greater productivity.

So in one town the authorities enacted land reform and made all the farmers private landowners on their small holdings. The farmers then all went to the local party boss, sold him their land and nicked off to the nearest city to spend their profits on cheap booze and heroin.

By the time the authorities realised what a disaster it all was and tried to round up the farmers to get them back on to the land, half of them were dead. (apologies to huguenot if some of the details were wrong, his story).

The moral being that people are generally their own worst enemy, and the road to hell is paved....etc)

"Make the heads of corporations personally liable"

Totally with you on this one, profoundly shocked by the chap trying to get to the bottom of why his kid died in the clapham rail crash how was told by an insider that the rail operator considered installing the new signal system, but a cost benefit analysis showed that in the long term, accident and death compensation payments would be considerably cheaper than the safer signalling system.

Whoever made a decision based on that should go to prison full stop, that's manslaughter!!

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

macrobabn - "Of more immediate interest to us are the plans to reduce the amount of social housing on the East Dulwich Estate." yep that too

Mockney - ok just give me my bit and I can get the smack from Peckham

[Louisa]

I think social housing should be abolished altogether anyway. I do not think it supplies the people who need it most, and it usually ends up in shed loads of bureacratic nonsense. On a side note, the fact social housing is reducing on the Dulwich Estate could be a good thing. I do not want to encourage the council to build on the beautiful and unique greenery surrounding the villag and bordering us in ED. The ares will end up yet another inner London crime hotspot.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

So you want to bulldoze my council house? And the estate my kids grew up on then Louisa?

What do you want to replace it with, or should we all pitch our tents in the park?

[*Bob*]

I suggest replacing it with a plethora of independent shops selling selling expensive soft furnishings, knick-knacks and worthless ornamental goods. The need is great and the people of ED are hurtin', man.. they need a fix.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

haha Bob - I'll pack my shabby bags immediately to make way for what is, in all honesty, a greater cause than my selfish desire for a roof over my head

[alachlan]

More than 50% of Southwark housing is social and/or supported in some way. As I've said before this gives us a large supply problem and we end up with expensive and "poncier" pockets developing, so yes, if your and many other estates weren't there then we might have a lower variance in area quality, and a higher overall standard.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Or the council could be allowed to spend the money collected on rents and council house sales on their housing stock for a f%&?*&g change.

The real support in housing is actually going to the private sector by funding local authorities through the council tax, instead of rates attached to the value of residential properties and discounts for second homes.

And see above for the landlord rip off re hostels

[alachlan]

am i missing something here? council tax is basically attached to the value of the property (albeit a dated valuation)??

perhaps we should just pay a fixed fee per adult then - that seems the fairest way to me....

takes cover!!!!!

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

No it's not. It's a person tax that takes account of the value of a property.

So If I live alone in a mansion I pay a higher tax than if I live in a squalid bedsit but if I get a friend to live with me in my squalid bedsit, they too have to pay a tax, even though the squalid bedsit has not got any bigger and I don't own it. I could have 5 mates in there to help me with my rent, and between us we would probably be paying more in an overcrowded squalid bedsit none of us own, than the rich tw@t in the mansion.

Also if I was the mansion owner, and I wanted a place in the city so I don't have to commute then I could choose which place I call my permanent residence (the lower council tax area in the country no doubt) and after driving the social cleansing to build my city pad, I would also pay less council tax than my neighbours cos it wouldn't be fair to make me pay two, or three or four lots of council tax for all the places I own, now would it?

[JoeChuff]

umm, that's not true. If your mate moves into the bedsit you split the C-tax bill.

i agree with you on everything else though

[alachlan]

The rich tw@t can only be in one place at a time and thus consume only one set of council services at a time...

In fact CWALD - Do you actually pay council tax at all seeing as you don't appear to understand how it works?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Not if I can help it - so I must admit I'm talking out of my ar*e a bit, but I still think that if there was no reduction for single people and no reduction for second homes it would be fairer.

[Louisa]

CWALD I think that social housing creates poverty and a feeling of being left outside the mainstream. I think what makes it worse are these tower blocks and estates which have little or no foresight into town planning. Low-rise or victorian conversions by the council are the way to go with social housing, and it should be spread evenly across many areas rather than limited to one area, say Peckham or Camberwell for example. ED has more than enough social housing as it is, I dont think building on any green spaces will help, all it will do is make our area a dump.

[Michael Palaeologus]

I live on my own and pay a discounted rate - but not 50% of that paid by couples. As I make limited use of some council services and no use of others (education for instance) why should I pay the full amount? I am already subsiding the fecund.

[mockney piers]

Ooh, do you have to be married for the 50%, as I'm in a couple and it's flipping expensive!!

[*Bob*]

Doesn't Michael just mean that if you're in a couple (married or not!) you pay half the bill each so it's 'kind-of' a 50% reduction?

At least compared to lone-dwellers, who only get 25% off or whatever it is?