Oxford Council subsidises business

Sorry Matt - I have to respond to this.

First, new social housing is going to be built on this land once the flats are demolished. Matt is right to say it won't be 100% social housing, because of the way housing funding works we have to do this through a partnership with a housing association and a private developer. Like Matt I would like to see 100% development of affordable housing wherever sites comes up. I also dont agree with the way the housing funding is allocated and I beleive councils should build and own their own housing stock. To achieve this we should support Austin Mitchell and the trade unions in the campaign to defend council housing. What we dont do is to refuse to build anything that involves housing associations and is not 100% social housing, because that would mean we would dramatically decrease the amount of social housing units being built in the city and add to the homelessness crisis. I am sure the Green Party is not in favour of that, so I am surprised at the position being taken here.

Secondly, a critical thing Matt doesn't mention in his contribution is that there will be more social housing on the site with the new development than there is now once the development goes ahead. This is because the land will be used more intensively, which is a council planning policy the Greens in particular are right to support, so we get the most out of brown field sites.

Finally, the reason Labour Councillors on Rose Hill opposed demolition was because local residents have raised concerns that the site would attract abandoned cars and dumping if the new development doesnt go up quickly. I am very sympathetic to that, but there is a serious debate to be had here - do you leave empty buildings up, which will also attract a whole range of problems, or do you knock them down? The reason Labour and Lib Dem councillors voted for demolition was beacuse of fears that the site would attract more problems left up than if it were demolished. This isnt an ideological issue - its a simple question of where the balance of probabilities lies, and you jump one way or the other.

Fraternally,

Rick Muir,

Labour Councillor for Hinksey Park Ward

Well, it's good to see that IMC Oxford is being perused by a wide variety of people - even Labour councillors! :)

I think it is probably best not to get into a debate about this, because it will inevitably involve a dispute about which is the best political party etc etc and I know that the IMC mods don't like that - it is not really what Indymedia is for.

Suffice to say I don't agree - tho I will say (as one last shot before I leave the
newswire in peace!) that most of these problems are caused by the Labour national
government, Rick, of whom you are a supporter...

Peace,

Matt

I think there is an abuse of people with words here.

Words such as 'affordable' are ill-defined. As far as I can gather this means working your whole life in a shity job in order to be able to buy a pretty shity house in a shity neighbourhood. Maybe you will only own half of it, the other half owned by a housing association or whoever.

Mention 'social housing' as a relatively fit, single, young male and the council literally laughs at you. Its true, they have done it to me twice. It is fact that relatively fit, young, single men have the highest rates of suicide in this country.

I hold the housing crisis responsible. Mental illness, depression and suicidal thoughts are more common with young men who have insecure housing. Fact. Suicidal thoughts give people a last option, more risky behaviour can result - there is always that last option / what have I got to lose? This results in anti-social behaviour, crime etc. etc.

Rose Hill is full of empty boarded up housing and there is rubish everywhere, in peoples gardens mainly!

There are several issues here. One the council is a bitch. They manage to lose £1m and not to be able to account for another £11m. Two the council is a bitch because they talk bollocks about having to spend our money for our good when its not for our good.
Three the global domination by a despicable economic system over the world is not being countered by the council it never will be.

You all have to realise that you are servants of Mammon.

Yes, whats this "affordable housing" then - have you seen anything in Oxford thats affordable lately?
Last time I looked studio flats in East Oxford were around £100,000 + for a box 15ft square with a couple of smaller boxes for cooking and washing...

The Labour lot are just as bad as the rest of the mainstream when it comes to housing issues. Granted Thatcher started the process of selling off council housing stock, and stopped them building new stock, but Neo Labour have done nothing to prevent this, but have furthered the process, bringing in further privatisation of council housing stock - to Housing associations - most of whom are in the business of looking after themselves and trying to ignore their tenants as much as possible, moving away from accessible locations near the bulk of their housing to out-of-town locations (eg Cherwell), spending millions on plush head office buildings (eg Notting Hill) and generally not giving a shit about the people who they are meant to be there for in the first place.

And as another single male who is fit, working and doesn't fit into any of the special categories that a house can immediately be found for, there's absolutely no chance of me getting into social housing in Oxford - I've been quoted a 4-5 year waiting list minimum, as I'm low priority apparently.
Of course I could probably get a similar sized box to the one above for a fifth of the price - in Scotland, where one bed flats go in places like Mallaig for £20k upwards. But then I'd have virtually no chance of getting a reasonable job there to pay for it.

The root causes of many of the current housing problems lie with Thatchers policies, when the upwards climb of house prices started in the 80's. There's a large number of fat satisfied Tories &Neo labourites (Same thing really...) who've made shed loads of money buying and selling houses, some of these have done very well out of just the home they live in , buying, tarting it up and flogging it again for a fat profit. And the sucessive Tory & Neo Labour governments have encouraged this at every opportunity. Screw the rest of us who are now in a position where we will never be able to have anywhere we can call home in Oxford, and are looking for an alternative such as low impact developments, self build and so on ( but the planning regs have made this even more difficult), except that any suitable land wher we might conceivably get planning permission will go for £6-8000 per acre for the same fat rich tories who's little darlings need a space for their pony. (Its real value should be £2-3000 as rough grazing).
But of course we didn't vote for them, so why should they do anything in our interests.
I for one am hoping that the much talked about crash in house prices happens soon, and is spectacular enough that I might actually be able to buy somewhere, just so I don't have to keep giving money to scumbag landlords. Better start saving that deposit...

Upto 50% of the price of a house comes from the price of the land.

Any policy that truly aims to provide affordable housing would not put a monetry value on land and let the beastly market dictate prices.

Every citizen would be entitleded to a piece of land as a matter of necessity.
The local authority would aid the local community to reach a concensus on the value of new developments after economic, environmental and social impacts had been properly assessed.

Those new developments that were of national importance would be researched by a stragic authority for the nation, an authority that does not have the authority to overrule local decisions. (Is authority the right name?).

Anyway my point is that the land is all of ours and should not be used by servants of the beast to suck the blood out of us.

Just to clear a couple of things up. The council that lost all that money (which Homeless mentioned above) was the county council, not the city council of which Matt and Rick are members. Yes it is incompetently run (by the Tories and the Lib Dems) and this in particular is a disgrace.

Secondly, Rick is not a supporter of Tony Blair, any more than you or I are, as you know quite well Matt! :-)

Mike

… If representative democracy is going to work at all then that means representatives have to be prepared to have properly reasoned debates in public. This is a good debate to be had on Indymedia; it’s relevant to the local community and there is no reason whatsoever why it should degenerate into a debate over which party is best.

A point was made by matt, and a strong and reasoned reply was made by Rick. So I think that it’s only reasonable to expect matt to reply in kind. For the record, I voted green at the last city council elections (I’m a constituent of matt’s), and would like to do so again, but we can only assume from the above that the Labour faction on the council was correct.

The reply to Matt’s point was that; given that nothing could be done about the disagreeable system of allocating funds for housing, the option as chosen by the council in fact maximises the amount of social housing.

So as I see it, Matt must reply in one of the following ways:
a) the policy option chosen does not, in fact maximise the amount of social housing.
b) despite the fact that the option chosen does maximise social housing, it still shouldn’t have been chosen because it is an unacceptable compromise on an important matter of principle. (i.e. some social housing should be sacrificed for the principle)
c) the system of funding allocation has been misrepresented
d) there is another policy option which would better combine opposition to the current funding system and the need for social housing, which the Greens were advocating. (perhaps the one in the minutes called ‘refurbishment’ costing £1,500,000?)

It does *not* suffice to say that you don’t agree – not at all. I want, as a constituent, to know why. Nor is it sufficient to say that the problems are caused by labour national government. Because while I do not doubt that this is true, this is only an argument against being in the Labour party, not against the policy option taken. This is a different debate (and indeed one which might be too intractable and abstract for indymedia.).

A proper response, please! Let’s not mirror the ridiculous form of debates at a national level here.

(I tried to post something similar before but it didn’t appear – apologies if these points come up twice - moderators feel free to delete the first one).

discussion continues here:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2004/09/297973.html

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't replied before this - to be honest I assumed that most people who checked the newswire just wouldn't be interested in City Council stuff - didn't see that it had become a central feature! I guess I am so used to being called a 'servant of Mammon' or 'corrupt' or whatever else when I post stories about this stuff that I have pretty
much given up. It's nice to see that some people are interested!

To address Rick's points:

(i) It is entirely possible for the Stephenfield House development to incorporate
100% social housing. Oxford City Council could certainly bid for Housing Corporation
funding, as it has done elsewhere in the city, to make this possible. The fact that
they *aren't* doesn't mean they *can't*. It beggars belief that they have taken this
approach in the Trap Grounds development (which will concrete over a valuable urban
wilderness site in North Oxford and build houses on FLOOD PLAIN - an appalling idea)
but not in Rose Hill. Of course, the problem that Oxford City Council faces is that
developments such as the Trap Grounds (which will end in disaster) have eroded the
confidence of the Housing Corporation in the Council's ability to manage such funding -
but that's the fault of the ruling Labour Group who keep investing in ridiculous
schemes rather than sound, much-needed ideas like keeping Stephenfield House 100%
affordable.

(ii) Rick didn't address the issue of nearly £150,000 going to demolish Stephenfield
House, apart from to say that opinion is split on the issue of keeping the houses
standing or not. Well, that's true, but opinion shouldn't be split on whether the
public purse should pay for it or not! If development of the site is a fair way off,
then keep using the bloody thing, don't knock it down when you have no contracts
signed and no certainty of development...and if a contractor is ready to sign contracts
and get working, then GET THEM TO PAY TO KNOCK THE THING DOWN. Oxford City Council
has a £30 million shortfall in our capital budget...we can't afford to be spraying
hundreds of thousands of quid around to subsidise private developers. We're already
proposing to sell off public land to private companies...lets not give them a fat
wad of cash as well. If you're worried about anti-social behaviour...why not give
Stephenfield House to OCSET for a couple of months? :)

(iii) I do think that it is relevant that it is the appalling record of the national
Labour government that is making affordable housing so scarce in Oxford, the South-East,
and the UK generally. Whether he likes it or not, Rick and other councillors like him
(some of whom, including Rick and Ed Turner, I have a great deal of time for) are
lending credibility to the New Labour project. They can't claim the credit for the
things that the Labour government does that they like (minimum wage etc) and then hold
up their hands and say 'not us guv' whenever Blair screws local government, poor
people, Iraqis etc etc etc. I'm afraid that, to me, Labour councillors have less
credibility complaining about the lack of social housing...because they are complicit
in the problem.

Hope this answers some of the questions at least - yes, Stephenfield House could be
100% affordable, and no, it shouldn't be knocked down with public money. :)

See why I didn't want to write anything...I start ranting. :)

Matt

... rants are alright as long as they're reasoned and to the point...

the substantial point (re: stephenfield) is that the council didn't even try and apply for housing corporation funding... why didn't this happen rick? is it true that the housing corporation would have turned the council down due to previous mismanagement?

the second point is that the council shouldn't pay for the demolition. but presumably if the council didn't pay for it, it would simply be factored into the cost of a redevelopment contract (probably plus a perecntage)? so am i right in thinking that the argument against this would be that 'making the contractor pay' would simply be an illusion, when in reality the total cost to the council would be increased? (though this doesn't counter the point about waiting till you've got a contractor ready to go before proceeding with demolition...)

as to the other things, building over an urban wilderness (?) flood plain does sound quite stupid... and yeah, the point about being in labour while saying you don't support its policies is an important one (that i agree with). But it relates more generally to 'which party is best' than to council housing policy.

I won't make any other substantial points about the things that Rick
raised until he has a chance to reply. I just wanted to add that, for
me, the biggest problem about this entire case is that the facts are
entirely obscure - it's very difficult to work out exactly what is
going on here. I fielded a call from a member of the Rose Hill
Tenants' Association the other day, who was also concerned on this
point - apparently he feels that he and other tenants haven't been
given the full details about what is going on in Rose Hill, and why.

Now it may be that the council have tried to fill people in and just
haven't reached this guy - that's fair enough. But I am rather
concerned with the different assertions that are coming out of
different parts of the Council about this demolition. For example,
Rick tells us that there will be more social housing on this site
after the demolition and rebuilding...but Ed Turner (Housing
Portfolio Holder) told Full Council that there would be an
equivalent amount. This isn't the same as more - and the social
housing would no longer be under democratic control.

This is all quite opaque, and it'd be good to know the full facts.

Matt

P.S. Those who are interested in the Trap Grounds should google
it - it has been a long running saga, and is now about to be taken
to the Court of Appeal/House of Lords by the City Council.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and for contributing to the discussion. A
lot of very thoughtful points have been made and I will try to respond to them
as briefly as I can below, though brevity on this subject is not easy.

1. Housing Corporation Grants

Matt is absolutely right to say that the Council can apply for Housing
Corporation grants to support social housing schemes and that this can, as in
the Trap Grounds case, allow us to puruse 100% social schemes.

If I had my way we would always pursue social housing schemes in this way.
However, life is not that simple. First of all, on the general issue of
funding new build social housing, we are constrained financially because an
application for Housing Corporation grant has to be backed up by a capital
commitment from the local authority. The problem is that we have a capital
budget which is heavily committed to existing schemes and is financially at
breaking point. We are, for instance, committed to the modernization of our
leisure centres and bringing our council homes as a whole up to the Decent
Homes Standard by 2010 - and we are committed to doing this ourselves from our
capital budget because we want to keep these assets under public ownership, and
not as some have advocated sell them to fund the renovation. Because of that
commitment to public ownership, we have very little slack to add additional new
build to our capital programme. That does not mean we cannot do it - and we
are doing so in the Trap Grounds case and, incidentally, may well do so in the
Rose Hill case as the Council is still thinking of making an application to the
HC, but it does mean we cannot fund all new developments in the way suggested
by Matt and we have to act flexibly if we want to meet our objective of
achieving a major expansion in social housing in Oxford.

One unintended but bitter irony in Matt's position is that if we committed
ourselves to pursuing all new build from our own capital, we would steadily run
out of capital to bring our existing stock up to the decent homes standard.
That would mean we would be in a much weaker position to protect ourselves from
stock transfer - which both the Labour and Green Groups on the Council strongly
oppose - as we have to demonstrate to the government that we can meet the
standard from our own resources, otherwise they have the power to force a stock
transfer on us. We want to keep our housing stock in public ownership - and
having made that choice, we have to back it up with capital funding meaning
that it will be impossible to use this same budget to build all our new
housing. These are the cruel dilemmas we are forced to confront.

Why has the Council pursued a scheme on Rose Hill that is not dependent on a
Housing Corporation grant? Please note I am refering to the whole scheme for
replacing the Orlit houses on Rose Hill which are way below the standard we and
our tenants expect - of which the Stephensfield House site is one part. The
reason for this is that we have an obligation to re house the Orlit tenants
whether or not the Housing Corporation agrees to support us - therefore we have
to have a scheme which is not dependent on HC support. It is simply not an
option to leave these Orlit homes as they are and we have to be able to meet
our obligation to the tenants regardless of how we ultimately finance it.

2. Why the Council are paying for the demolition

We cannot pass the cost on to the developer because the new scheme is still at
a very early stage and we do not have a contract with anyone to pursue it. Why
not leave it standing therefore as Matt has advocated? We cannot continue to
use the building as it has already been assessed as below standard and to start
bringing it back into use even temporarily would cost a lot of the money we are
talking about. We cannot just put people in it as it is. To leave it empty we
would have to pay for the costs of sitexing the building which we have to do
for safety reasons which I have been told from past experience could easily add
up to the 100K we are talking about for demolition.

There is, therefore, no meaningful subsidy here as the costs to the tax payer
would be significant whether the building is left up or whether it is knocked
down.

3. The proportion of social housing

Having spoken to Ed I should have been less definitive about this and I
apologise for that. I had thought from the debate that there would definitely
be more, but its a bit more complicated than that.

One reason is that it depends on the type of units that go up and that is not
yet clear. The flats in SH are elderly accomodation (for which there is
relatively low demand in the city) - and what we are trying to build on the
site and in the rest of the Rose Hill development is social housing which
rehouses the existing Orlit tenants first of all but then also from any
additional units meets the needs of the people on our homelessness and transfer
waiting lists - that could be a mixture of flats and family houses - we cant
give exact figures at the moment, but obviously the size of the units will
determine the number of units we can put up. The objective however is clear -
as well as providing new better quality housing for all the existing Orlit
tenants who will be rehoused - we are trying to increase the density to get as
much additional social housing out of the development as possible, which will
hopefully mean more overall.

There are some additional factors that mean precise figures are unavailable:
the plans are at an early stage, there will be a debate about quality versus
quantity - obviously with a fixed amount of cash the more you build, the less
money you have to devote to each unit so there is a debate to be had there and
the whole thing has to go through planning where local residents do often
object to high density developments because of their impact on neighbouring
amenity.

I hope this helps shed some light on the ambiguity and I apologise for saying
there would definitely be more - although thats what I thought at the time.

4. Transparency

The local Councillors tell me there has been very thorough consultation with
all the Orlit tenants who are going to be re housed. People are supportive of
the scheme as they want to be re housed in better homes and the most
contentious issue so far has concerned car parking and a garage block. If Matt
is talking about who i think he is talking about, then John (who I know well
and respect a great deal) is not an Orlit tenant and so will not have recieved
that level of consultation. The plans have as I understand it been discussed
with the Tenants and Residents Association - but obviously the people who we
need to talk to most of all are the families who will be rehoused.

5. The Labour Party and all that jazz

I dont think I have the time here to respond properly to Matt's comment on the
inconsistency of my views with my membership of the Labour Party - and I am
sure most people wouldnt be very interested. Matt and I have been debating
this by email at any rate. But just to sum it up - its a very broad church
made up of several different ideological currents, you can be a member and
disagree with a number of government policies, as I do very strongly on the
question of council housing, however what you have to do is share the common
historical aims and trajectory. As for the socialist Left in the Labour Party -
our time will come, I am becoming increasingly confident about that.

Thanks - sorry for going on so long - am happy to respond to points, queries
and criticisms of which I am sure there will be many!

Cheers

Rick

"To leave it empty we would have to pay for the costs of sitexing the building
which we have to do for safety reasons which I have been told from past experience
could easily add up to the 100K we are talking about for demolition."

Is the sitex really necessary for safety? What is the state of the building? Squatters (eg OCSET) could perhaps make good use of the building while it is empty and unused, while also keeping it safe, secure and in a decent condition.

I've been following this debate with interest, obviously there's an honest difference of opinion between two political people I know and respect. I would like to make a couple of points in response to what I've read, and since I'm feeling a bit anal today I'll number them.

(1) OCSET is a great idea and squatting can be a very good use of unused buildings (in fact I helped out with the LMS squat, when we were trying to prevent that being demolished). However there's a limit to what a Council as an official body can do. If anything happens to a council-owned building then the local community gets to foot the bill through Council Tax, and local government is surrounded with government-set rules and regulations like you wouldn't believe. If the Council actually let squatters in they'd probably get prosecuted! And to state the obvious, in the long run the more social housing there is the fewer people will have the misfortune of becoming homeless.

(2) I understand the reluctance to build social housing on green areas, but you've got to ask yourself, when North Oxford residents object to building on the Trap Grounds and insist social housing must be crammed into whatever little bits of space are still available in East Oxford, where are those people coming from. Undoubtedly they like the environment. But do they also not like proles?

(3) Who on Earth is criticising Matt in particular for protesting against human rights abuses in China? Without protest democracy in this country would be dead.

(4) I regret a brief comment on party politics but it seems to be a theme of this thread. It is possible, contra Matt, to be in a political party without agreeing with its leadership, if you think that that party can achieve progress in the direction you want, and lots of people like you are fighting within it. I remember once a Green Party member saying he was "fighting to make my Party less crap". Political parties exist for a reason: they have a social base and a constituency with certain demands and objective needs. They aren't perfect, but if you want a better world you need the resources and accumulated experience and ideas they have. Even Aristotle couldn't move the Earth, because he had nowhere to stand. The particular reasons why Rick and I choose to take our stand in the Labour Party, and Matt in the Greens, aren't the stuff of Indymedia. But I would contend that our decisions are all equally worthy of respect.

Mike :-)

Dear Rick,

I'm not sure how long we should go on about this - I suspect we could argue with each
other til kingdom come (and possibly will on a whole range of subjects!) and not
necessarily resolve the differences of principle and strategy between us. I'd like to
thank you, however, for responding so thoughtfully and in such a detailed way. As I've
said before, you are one of the Labour Councillors I have a lot of respect for, and its
good to be able to engage in some decent debate - especially given some of the bile
flying about on other sections of the newswire.

I'll address just a few of your points as they came up, tho the discussion is getting
wide-ranging enough that it will be difficult to cover everything:

>>Because of that
commitment to public ownership, we have very little slack to add additional new
build to our capital programme. That does not mean we cannot do it - and we
are doing so in the Trap Grounds case and, incidentally, may well do so in the
Rose Hill case as the Council is still thinking of making an application to the
HC, but it does mean we cannot fund all new developments in the way suggested
by Matt and we have to act flexibly if we want to meet our objective of
achieving a major expansion in social housing in Oxford.>>

I'm very glad to hear that you are still considering a HC grant in this case - of
course part of my problem as an opposition councillor who is supposed to scrutinise
these decisions is that, as I said before, it is actually very hard to get the info
on these decisions. As far as I was aware, this was going to be a mixed development
put up by a private developer...if the COuncil is now considering 100% social housing
through a HC grant, then excellent! Just wish I (and those who live in Rose Hill)
knew exactly what was going on. To set the record straight on your last sentence, I
am not proposing that all new builds be 100% social housing, tho I would love for them
to be...I know we don't have the money or the legal power to do this. However, the
Green Group did insert a clause into the Second Draft Local Plan calling for every new
development to contain 50% social housing....this, at least, is a step forward. And
before Boris leaps on me for not giving credit where credit is due, the Labour Group
have kept this clause and (I believe) fought for it during the inspectors inquiry...so
lets hope it survives. However, there are a number of brownfield developments where this
principle is not yet being applied...EVERY development in this city should be at least
50% affordable, from now on, no ifs no buts.

>>One unintended but bitter irony in Matt's position is that if we committed
ourselves to pursuing all new build from our own capital, we would steadily run
out of capital to bring our existing stock up to the decent homes standard.
That would mean we would be in a much weaker position to protect ourselves from
stock transfer - which both the Labour and Green Groups on the Council strongly
oppose - as we have to demonstrate to the government that we can meet the
standard from our own resources, otherwise they have the power to force a stock
transfer on us. We want to keep our housing stock in public ownership - and
having made that choice, we have to back it up with capital funding meaning
that it will be impossible to use this same budget to build all our new
housing. These are the cruel dilemmas we are forced to confront. >>

You are certainly correct that, in our case especially but in all local authorities
generally, there is not an unlimited pool of money - even if we wanted to hike council
taxes, they only make up 40% of our revenue anyway. HOwever, there are various means to
bring in large amounts of money to the COuncil, should we wish to pursue them - some
of which the Greens have been advocating for years. For example (and I know there
are differences between our capital and revenue budgets, but I simply offer it as
an example of where extra funds can come into the council) our car parking charges in
most parts of the City have not been raised (even by inflation) for a decade. Car
parking charges bring in more than 5 million to the City COuncil every year, and are
quite frankly too low....hundreds of thousands of pounds are just lying there.

>>We cannot pass the cost on to the developer because the new scheme is still at
a very early stage and we do not have a contract with anyone to pursue it. Why
not leave it standing therefore as Matt has advocated? We cannot continue to
use the building as it has already been assessed as below standard and to start
bringing it back into use even temporarily would cost a lot of the money we are
talking about. We cannot just put people in it as it is. To leave it empty we
would have to pay for the costs of sitexing the building which we have to do
for safety reasons which I have been told from past experience could easily add
up to the 100K we are talking about for demolition. >>

I agree with the poster above, who made the same point - properties don't have to
stand empty and be sitexed up because we can't put council tenants in them. There is
an active squatting community in Oxford...why can't they provide security AND a valuable
community service at the same time in properties such as this? It is this kind of
bold thinking that isn't going on in the Council....mostly because of leagues of red
tape, health and safety regulations and so on. But we surely have to ask ourselves, do
we want to spend 150,000 quid subsidising a demolition, or can we think of an innovative
way of keeping this place open AND secure? We have a money problem, but we don't
necessarily have to address everything by throwing money at it - there are alternative
options that simply aren't explored at the moment. Unsurprising, given the visceral
reaction to the suggestion that evil squatters might move into Stephenfield House
from some Labour Councillors at the Full COuncil meeting.

>>The objective however is clear -
as well as providing new better quality housing for all the existing Orlit
tenants who will be rehoused - we are trying to increase the density to get as
much additional social housing out of the development as possible, which will
hopefully mean more overall.>>

Excellent - and this somewhere where our manifestos, at least, agree. I would argue
that the Labour Group's practice doesn't always coincide with its stated principles
however...I would truly like to see us pushing developers harder and further. Hopefully,
from Christmas, our Second Local PLan will be in effect...and one would hope that the
50% affordable housing clause will have survived. We should be saying to any potential
developers of this site 'you will do the demolition yourself, AND you will provide
50% social housing, AND you will meet the highest environmental standards'. We are too
scared that developers will run away...but this is simply not true. Real estate prices
in Oxford are astrononmical...and this is OUR land. We have the whip hand, not the
other way around....they need to be doing favours for us, and the people of Oxford...not
us doing favours for them.

>>The local Councillors tell me there has been very thorough consultation with
all the Orlit tenants who are going to be re housed. People are supportive of
the scheme as they want to be re housed in better homes and the most
contentious issue so far has concerned car parking and a garage block. If Matt
is talking about who i think he is talking about, then John (who I know well
and respect a great deal) is not an Orlit tenant and so will not have recieved
that level of consultation. >>

Nice guess, but incorrect. . I know more than one person who lives in ROse HIll,
believe it or not. You have prompted me to go and talk to John about it tho, and I'm
sure he will have some things to say! :)

>>But just to sum it up - its a very broad church
made up of several different ideological currents, you can be a member and
disagree with a number of government policies, as I do very strongly on the
question of council housing, however what you have to do is share the common
historical aims and trajectory. As for the socialist Left in the Labour Party -
our time will come, I am becoming increasingly confident about that.>>

Oh if only I believed it were true! Just look at the rail renationalisation motion,
Rick - you won...and were then contemptously ignored by the leadership of your own
party. Why don't you join a party which would actually carry out its policy of renationalisation...like, say...I don't know...the Greens? :)

Having said that, I'm glad that people like you are councillors, even if I think you
are in the wrong party. Much better you, Ed Turner, Dan Paskins and so on than
some other other councillors I could name....

Yours ever,

Matt

> (1) OCSET is a great idea and squatting can be a very good use of unused buildings

> However there's a limit to what a Council as an official body can do.


There have been lots of excuses to the effect that the council are simply inherently incapable of doing certain things. I agree. I wasn't seriously expected the council to be able to officially hand the building over to squatters, but it does illustrate once again the limitations inherent in our system of local government. So maybe it's about time we overthrew this mediocre bureacracy and found other ways of running Oxford?

(Not that I'm ungrateful towards those councillors who do the best they can within the limits available ;)

>Oh if only I believed it were true! Just look at the rail renationalisation motion,
>Rick - you won...and were then contemptously ignored by the leadership of your own
>party. Why don't you join a party which would actually carry out its policy of >renationalisation...like, say...I don't know...the Greens? :)

Problem is that the Green Party isn't going to carry out its policy of rail renationalisation, as there seems no immediate prospect of it forming a government! The fact that the Greens honestly advocate good policies is great, obviously. But as I said, you need a place to stand if you want to change the world: preferably with the labour movement who can. I hope activists will forgive me for being so "pragmatic". I am less confident that classicists will forgive me for stupidly ascribing the above sentiment to Aristotle rather than Archimedes. Never mind!

Mike :-)