George Monbiot calls for massive housebuilding programme

[Gerrard Winstanley]

We build 3 million homes - or leave these families in Dickensian misery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2217573,00.html
(full article copied below)


But could this mean the destruction of much of the rural environment
and urban open space George holds so dear, and an unacceptable
increase in greenhouse gas emmissions?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unrestrained Globalism-Monbiot agrees to 3 million new homes
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/386717.html

Unlimited immigration-Who benefits?

Having been feted and promoted by the SWP Monbiot is clearly placing
his views with Big Business. As with 9/11 where he defended the Bush
line unconditionally years after almost everyone makes fun of it he
has now come up with why Britain needs unrestrained building.
At the same time the next day an article appeared whereby the
population of the UK will allegedly reach 108 million. If anyone can
believe official figures then one must take the lates figure with a
pinch of salt and probably reduce the timescale of 75 years to a third
of that and add another half to the figure they quote. Only 13,000
allegedly were predicted to arrive when EU borders opened up. Now they
are talking of the entrance of Turkey and the Ukraine another 110
million added to the EU population!
In other words the Japanesation of Britain whereby millions will live
in even more cramped conditions and travel will become even more
intolerably as investments in infrastructure grind to a halt after the
collapse of PFI schemes like Metronet with billions in debts.
Morissey of the Smiths summed up it appears what many already feel is
happening but are unable to say anything due to the unrestrained
globalism of the so-called 'anti-racist' left. 

Morrissey vs NME: Mozgate Part II
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/11/mozgate.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------


We build 3 million homes - or leave these families in Dickensian misery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2217573,00.html

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 27, 2007
The Guardian

It sounds preposterous: 3 million new homes in England alone by 2020.
My instinct is to fight this project. It threatens Britain's
countryside, the character of our towns, our water supplies and carbon
targets. Today the housing and regeneration bill, which will help to
implement this building programme, has its second reading in the House
of Commons.

Where should we stand? Is the housing crisis as acute as some people
have claimed? Or has it been whipped up by the House Builders
Federation, hoping to get its claws into the countryside? To find out
whether these homes are really needed, I asked the charity Shelter to
take me to meet some of the people it works with in London. I had no
idea. I simply had no idea.

Article continues
Wendy Castle moved into her flat in Trellick Tower, in west London,
when her eldest child was a baby. He's now 16, and she has three
others between 13 and two. But her flat has only two bedrooms. She
sleeps in one of them with her two youngest children. The room is
completely filled by beds. On one side they are jammed against the
window, which no longer shuts properly. On the other they are pressed
against the heater, which can't be used because of the fire risk. Her
two oldest boys share an even smaller room.

She keeps her flat in a state of Japanese minimalism, but in the tiny
living room the children were sitting on each other's laps to watch
the television. Like all the women I met that day, Wendy, tough as she
has become, cried when she told me how this crowding was affecting her
children. Her oldest boy is falling behind at school because "he
physically does not have space to do his homework. He can't do
anything till the other kids go to bed".

But the real shock came when she explained why she was stuck.
Kensington and Chelsea, like several London boroughs, operates a
points system, reflecting people's level of deprivation. Every Monday
morning it posts up the flats available for social tenants (those who
pay less than the market rate). People with enough points can bid for
them. Wendy has 40. She has been able to bid on only one occasion.
Though her family is officially "severely overcrowded", her bid came
87th out of 92. Eighty-six households, bidding for the same flat, were
deemed to be in greater need than hers. "I've tried everything. But
when I ring them they say: 'I don't know why you bother. You ain't got
the points'."

In a block across the road from the tower I visited Aisha and Abdul
Omarzaiy. They have 280 points, but they have also been told they are
wasting their time. Aisha and Abdul received asylum from Afghanistan
in 1992. They were given this flat five months after they arrived in
Britain, and were promised that after six months they would be moved
to a bigger place. They now have four children, aged between two and
19, in a tiny two-bedroom flat. (Remember this, next time someone
claims that people granted asylum get priority). The oldest boy and
girl have to share a room, a desk and a homework rota. The youngest
girl sleeps in bed with her mother. Abdul and the 10-year-old sleep on
the living room floor. The 19-year-old has dyslexia and needs peace to
concentrate: he is now re-sitting his A-levels for the second time. He
can't bring friends home, as there is nowhere for them to speak
privately, and he's embarrassed about sharing a room with his sister.
Like Wendy, Aisha keeps the flat neat and sparse. But prison cells are
more spacious.

Now suffering severe depression, Aisha has lobbied the council and
written to her member of parliament. "When I had three children they
told me I'd be moved straight away if I had another one. I didn't want
another one. But after seven years the fourth came along. They still
won't move us." The council did offer a solution: to put the oldest
boy in a hostel. "They told us straight," Abdul said. "They don't have
big properties."

Kensington and Chelsea, as the diligent councillor Emma Dent Coad told
me, has a poor record on social housing - a kind of economic cleansing
seems to be taking place. But there are similar backlogs all over
London. Shelter took me to meet Jacqueline Pennant, who lives with her
children in a tiny maisonette in south Wandsworth. Jacqueline has
osteoarthritis and a hairline fracture in the spine, a prolapsed disc
and sciatica in both legs. She should be confined to a wheelchair, but
it won't fit in the house. She dragged herself from one piece of
furniture to the next, then up the narrow stairs, clutching at the
bannisters, her face gnarled up in pain. I saw this in Britain, in
November 2007.

Jacqueline and her three children have been in this two-bedroom house
for 13 years. In 1996, she thought that she was about to be moved, and
packed her stuff into boxes. Eleven years later they are still
shutting out the light, as she waits like Miss Haversham for the date
that never comes. Her oldest boy has severe attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder and finds the crowding unbearable. The middle
one is routinely hospitalised with asthma, exacerbated by sleeping in
a tiny slot between his mother's bed and the wall. In the kitchen you
can touch both walls with your palms. "If I can't use my wheelchair I
don't have a life," Jacqueline told me. "The strain on my back has
made my problems a lot worse. I'm so depressed and frustrated."

This is a small sample, but it's indicative of a quiet social
catastrophe. Over half a million households are officially
overcrowded, 85,000 are in temporary accommodation, 1.6m are on the
social housing waiting list. Even before you consider the backlog, the
newly arising need for homes is projected to run at some 220,000 a
year. Shelter's surveys tell the same story over and over: children
struggling with their schoolwork, parents crushed by depression and
stress, families living in conditions familiar to Dickens and Engels.

Part of this crisis arises from the Labour government's shocking
failure to build social homes. Though Margaret Thatcher was the first
to allow council houses to be sold, so undermining long-term
provision, during her tenure social homes were built at an average
rate of 46,600 a year. Under Blair, it fell to 17,300, while almost
half a million council houses were sold off, at an average rate of
48,300 a year. In this respect at least, New Labour has been as
Thatcherite as Thatcher.

It is true that much more could be done to mobilise empty houses, to
help elderly people to move into smaller flats and to stamp out what
is Britain's ugliest inequality: second homes. It is disappointing to
see how little of this there is in the housing bill. But even if all
such measures were used, they would release perhaps half a million
homes. I find myself, to my intense discomfort, supporting the
preposterous housing target. There is a legitimate debate to be had
about where and how these homes are built. However - though it hooks
in my green guts to admit it - built they must be.

monbiot.com