How The Tories Tackle The Housing Crisis.

The Tories have recently been addressing the problem of the housing crisis, cruising the TV studios telling us all about their concerns and presenting statistics that seem to indicate that they are doing something about it. Having ignored the problem for four years they were galvanised into action after very public warnings from the EU and the Bank of England that the recent re-inflation of the property market is a grave danger to the British economy. The problem for George Osborne is that the property boom constitutes the major element in his otherwise non-existent economic recovery. Building houses threatens this recovery for the rich only that Osborne has engineered and the growing inequality between rich and poor that he champions. Not to worry though because, behind the scenes, he, the Tory Party and their wealthy backers, are still cashing in for all they are worth in the property market. Mike Weatherly, Tory MP for Hove, has been busy promoting anti-squatting laws on behalf of wealthy property tycoons who are responsible for a staggering 710,000 empty houses in Britain and who have paid him thousands of pounds in personal "donations". Meanwhile Richard Benyon, pictured above, Tory MP for Newbury, has been investing in social housing estates in London and then raising rents in an effort to get rid of the working-class families that presently live there and replace them with wealthier tenants. The eventual goal, a spokesman for the consortium that has bought the New Era Estate in Hoxton said, is to "raise rents to the going market value." In case you're wondering the "going market value" in East London is it is £2,000 per month. Few, if any, of the present tenants could possibly afford such a rent hike and it seems unavoidable that they will soon be evicted and replaced by tenants more the Mr.Benyon's taste. This then is the Tory housing policy. Hundreds of thousands of empty houses put to one side as an "investment", unaffordable rents for ordinary working people, increasing homelessness and a rich rentier class sucking the lifeblood out of our economy.

Tax And How It Is Spent.

Yesterday Christine Lagarde was lecturing the Greeks about paying their taxes. Today it has been revealed that as an employee of an international organization she actually pays no tax whatsoever on her salary, which is in excess of £300,000 a year plus fringe benfits. Unlike the Greeks she has no need to dodge paying tax. Meanwhile, here in Britain the right-wing think tank, Centre for Social Justice (now there's a misleading title), has said that the government should scrap targets to reduce child poverty on the basis that "the poor are always with us." Or at least they will be if the Tories have anything to do with it. Though the British super-wealthy have made tax dodging into the only growth industry in the country and George Osborne seems to become strangely incompetent when it comes to closing loopholes, the rest of us have to pay our taxes whether we like it or not. Still we can take solace in the fact that our tax money is being diverted away from the undeserving disabled, unemployed and feckless and is now being spent on more worthwhile things. Can't we? Well, that depends on whether you think that the Wildlife minister, wealthy landowner and keen shot Richard Benyon, should spend your money on shooting buzzards in order to increase the number of pheasants available for the wealthy to take pot shots at. His ministry, by the way, has no brief to help out gamekeepers in their struggle to provide suitable targets for their rich masters and her certainly has no brief to kill a protected species like the British buzzard for the benefit of a tiny minority of Tory landowners. Not to worry though because Michael Gove has used his appearance at the Leveson Enquiry to air his belief that our shools, and presumably our schoolchildren, should generate profits for corporations making room for more tax cuts - not for you of course, but for his rich mates. The "News in Shorts" has one question. How much longer are we going to have to put up with these latter-day robber barons, spivs and conmen?