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Housing association police state

Keith Parkins | 16.06.2008 15:38 | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | South Coast

CCTV watching our every move, arbitrary arrest and detention under terrorism legislation to stifle protest and dissent, banning of the film On the Verge, 42 days detention for suspected terrorists. Day by day our civil liberties and human rights are being eroded and taken away. Housing associations are now part of the surveillance society.

Pavilion Housing Association has become part of the surveillance society, is treating its tenants and estates as though they are within a police state.

Pavilion was formed from the old council housing stock of Rushmoor (estates in Aldershot and Farnborough), and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of First Wessex. They have a reputation for poorly maintained properties, bad anti-social behaviour on their run down estates and crude intimidation and threats against their critics.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396006.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396759.html

The only information a housing association should hold on its tenants is that required to maintain their tenancy and property, nothing more. To hold more, is possibly a breach of Data Protection legislation.

Under the guise of carrying out a demographic survey, Pavilion Housing Association are amassing detailed, sensitive, personal information on its tenants – ethnic origins, religious beliefs, employment status, history of mental problems – information that they should not hold, have no right to hold. Information that it is not in the tenants' own interest that they should hold.

That this is a crude attempt to gather information on individual tenants not a genuine survey is shown by the fact that each survey form is delivered preprinted with the individual tenant's name! Information that will be used to monitor and intimidate tenants. To help collect further information on their tenants, tenants are being invited to become representatives, reporting directly to Pavilion.

Pavilion are inviting tenants to become tenant representatives. It is the intention that every street, every block, will have such a representative reporting direct to Pavilion. It will be Pavilion who will choose who these representatives will be!

Pavilion are also inviting tenants to join the TCG (Tenants' Consultative Group). In their invitation to tenants, Pavilion claim the TCG approve Pavilion policies. Not true, it is the board. The TCG is nothing but a talking shop, to give the illusion of tenant participation. Again it is Pavilion who will decide who the representatives will be. The existing TCG representatives are seen by tenants as Pavilion stooges, busybodies who poke their nose into where it is not wanted.

The tenant representatives have to sign an agreement which effectively prevents them from acting for their fellow tenants. Should they fail to follow Pavilion diktats, they will be barred by Pavilion from acting as representatives.

Atlantic, prior to their takeover of the failing Pavilion to form First Wessex, had in place neighbourhood representatives. It was feared that sooner or later, this socially divisive policy would be implemented by Pavilion.

This is going back to the worst excesses of the old Stalinist Soviet Union. The state formed trade unions, the state decided who the shop stewards would be. Every block, every neighbourhood had its representatives appointed by the state, otherwise known as informers. The same system existed in Iraq under Saddam Husein.

At best this is greenwash, a public relations exercise to convince gullible local councillors that Pavilion are working with and on behalf of their tenants.

Pavilion/First Wessex behave like feudal lords from the Dark Ages, their tenants treated like serfs. Seen in this light, their corporate logos are highly intriguing.

The corporate logo for Pavilion is a tent. The sort of tent a feudal lord would erect on a battlefield.

That for First Wessex is even more intriguing. It is a dragon with a looped tail. This bears a remarkable similarity to the Order of the Dragon, the symbol of Vlad Tepes, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, otherwise known as Drakulya, who we now know as Dracula. He was an extremely cruel 15th century warlord, who impaled his opponents on a stake. The best Pavilion can do these days to intimidate is to threaten its critics with legal action and an Asbo.

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6203708
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/art/elizabeth-kostova.htm
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396759.html

It would appear that all the tenants at Firgrove Court in Farnborough have finally been driven out of their homes. Hoardings are being erected around the estate, presumably to keep out squatters prior to its demolition.

Firgrove Court would be an ideal squat, 28 maisonettes, 5 minutes walk from Farnborough Station, 30 minutes by fast train to Waterloo!

Firgrove Court is being demolished for a car park for a superstore, part of the unwanted town centre redevelopment. Earlier in the year, garages with asbestos roofs were demolished, with no special precautions taken to deal with the asbestos. Farnborough town centre is now little more than a ghost town, having been destroyed by KPI, a Kuwaiti-financed front-company for St Modwen (who have an excellent track track record of destroying town centres).

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396456.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396016.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/397176.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/397758.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/397897.html?c=on

Surveyors have been seen out and about on the Pavilion estates in Aldershot. Presumably part of the revaluation of the property portfolio to see what other assets can be squeezed.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396672.html?c=on

There is to be a meeting in the near future to discuss the demolition of maisonettes in Selborne Avenue in Aldershot. The tenants have yet to be told, they will be the last people to be informed, let alone consulted.

At least one bank has refused to extend any further credit or loans to Housing Associations. Several housing associations are known to be in financial trouble. Pavilion is rumoured to be one of them. The Housing Corporation knows which ones, but won't say.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396859.html

web

 http://www.tlio.org.uk/
 http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk/dch/

Keith Parkins
- Homepage: http://www.heureka.clara.net/surrey-hants/

Comments

Display the following 4 comments

  1. Plenty of Rachmans around. — Jolly Roger
  2. clwyd alyn,wales — davey
  3. the new Rachman landlords — Keith
  4. clwyd alyn housing assocation — davey
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