Angela Rayner is a scrounger, grifter and shameless hypocrite.

I’m not suggesting anyone with a bit of money might have got it from drug dealing. I’m talking about ‘ordinary’ tenants whose lives were negatively affected by drug dealing. Council evicts dealer. Dealer returns to area in privately rented ex council house.

I suppose anyone with a bit of money might have got it through selling drugs.
I must remember that...

Iam64. A house which might have been bought with drug money.

This File on 4 is ten years old but also worth another listen:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07gfjhr

The popularity of right to buy has risen sharply since greater discounts were introduced four years ago, but so too have cases of fraud as people seek to exploit discounts of up to nearly £104,000.

Simon Cox goes on the trail of the fraudsters and the companies seeking to make big bucks out of right to buy. He discovers people trying to buy homes they're not entitled to and criminals attempting to launder drugs money. He investigates companies who offer tenants help to buy their home in order to get their hands on valuable properties.

It was partly at least why the discount was reduced.

Graphite, it really is a racket. Another problem I’ve observed on many occasions is people evicted from a council house for eg drug dealing, can reappear in the same area by privately renting a former council house.

This eleven year old Guardian article from Andy Beckett is worth a reread:

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/right-to-buy-margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis

Extract:

[Thatcher’s] administration, supposedly dynamic and new, in fact partly lived off [the] social capital that stodgy old social democracy had produced. What would happen when that social capital began to run out, like what would happen when Britain ran out of cheap housing, was, in the early 1980s, a question for another day.

Unusually among Thatcher’s ministers, Heseltine had some sensitivity to the wider consequences for housing of right to buy. He successfully argued that councils should be allowed to keep three-quarters of the income from sales, in order to replace the homes sold. Contrary to right to buy’s small but growing number of critics since the 80s, the policy did not kill council home-building overnight: more than 250,000 state-owned dwellings were completed between 1980 and 1985.

But the rate of construction did slow, year by year. The share of the income from sales that went to councils was gradually eroded, against Heseltine’s wishes. In 1983 Thatcher moved him to the Ministry of Defence, in large part to use his bulldozing charisma against CND and the women of Greenham Common.

Meanwhile rents for remaining council tenants rose with a new alacrity. By 1991 they were 55% higher, relative to average earnings, than they had been 10 years earlier. “If it were not for the right to buy,” conclude Jones and Murie, “the council housing sector as a whole would have generated huge surpluses [from rental income] and the rise in real rents ... would not have been necessary.” Or to put it more directly: home ownership was made possible for wealthier council tenants through discounts paid for by their poorer neighbours.

And now over 40% of former council housing stock is in the hands of private landlords (over 70% in some parts of the country). Many tenants need to claim housing benefit to meet the extortionate rents they charge. Housing benefit going straight into the pockets of landlords. What a racket.

Rent control now, Rayner, to stop this profiteering.

Iam64

AGAA4

Sunshinegirls

07:08Maremia

What's your excuse you've been on this thread quite a few times 😀

I've been on this thread a few times too. It's not enjoyable but seeing someone being vilified for something they haven't done has to be addressed however horrible the thread is.

I’ve just read through this thread. I’m quoting AGAA4 because it sums up how I feel. There’s something grubby about seeing AR vilified by women, especially those of us old enough to be her mother.
AR had a tough childhood. Her mum had mh problems, dad often absent, leaving AR in a carer role. Like many others from similar backgrounds, school attendance wasn’t prioritised by parents. An early baby, then she took advantage of Sure Start and began to build a better life for herself. She’s more representative of many in her constituency than many, Nadine Norris for example. She represents grifting, shamelessness and hypocracy

Well said Iam64. Sadly there have always been some who who make others look bad by blowing their mistakes out of proportion.

Maremia

Yes, if the Thatcher government had allowed the councils to sell and then use the money to rebuild, that would have made a difference.
Yes, good news about the polling.

Yes the polling news gave me a feelgood buzz the other day, especially as Reform looks to be dropping as well.
It’s early days but hope the Burnham Bounce keeps up.

For all pedants on here…it was judged to be a mistake by many people, including me that more council houses weren’t built at the time.
Which is why I used the word mistake 😃

Yes, if the Thatcher government had allowed the councils to sell and then use the money to rebuild, that would have made a difference.
Yes, good news about the polling.

Oreo

It was a policy of that government and a mistake by them.

There is a world of difference between a deliberate policy and a 'mistake'. To equate the two is a gross misuse of our language.

Thatcher wanted to kill 'the state' as comprehensively as she possibly could. Eliminating council housing was part of the very deliberate process.

And am sure that most people on GN know all the facts about the sale of council houses and what happened back then as we are all older people on here with an interest in politics.

It was a policy of that government and a mistake by them.

We shall have to see what AR manages to achieve with council houses building but if Labour doesn’t get back into power at the next GE my feeling is that not many will be built.
Thankfully with Labour now up in the polls because of AB as the new PM they now have a good chance.😃

Oreo

Yes I did know that and therein lay the mistake of government.

If you did know that why did you repeat the complaint that councils didn't build more houses to replace the ones they were obliged to sell at below market price?

It wasn't a 'mistake of government'. It was deliberate policy, as Tuliptree explained at 08.40.

What is to be deeply regretted is that Blair didn't reverse the policy when he had the opportunity post 1997.

Quoted wrong post but I’m sure people get the point

Oreo

Social engineering never works well, whether it was the sale of council houses or thinking that half of the nation’s teenagers should go to university.

Your post gave a very different impression by omitting the point that councils couldn’t use the money to build. Omitting incredibly salient facts is one type of misinformation and could be seen as deliberately misleading.

Social engineering never works well, whether it was the sale of council houses or thinking that half of the nation’s teenagers should go to university.

Yes I did know that and therein lay the mistake of government.

Thanks Wyllow, Tulip and others for stating the history of Labour building and Thatcher wrecking council housing

Oreo

All that councils did was sell, sell, sell and didn’t build any more houses.

You do know don’t you that councils were forbidden from using g tge money from the sales to build more houses? The reasons behind this were quite simple - Thatcher wanted a nation of property owners which she believed would mean a permanent Tory majority. Basically gerrymandering. In so doing, she set up the expansion of the private rented market and all the problems that have sprung from that. Like the privatisation of water, gas, electric she created so many of our present day problems. Just think the basics of a secure roof over your head, affordable energy and water.

I think the only lesson learned was not to build huge council estates which often became in later years ghettos of crime and nuisances.

All that councils did was sell, sell, sell and didn’t build any more houses.

Selling council houses to long term tenants who were able to afford it through saving wasn’t actually a bad idea on paper, like many things often are: like upping basic wages and piling on NI on employers or thinking that 50% of teenagers should go to universities , but good things on paper have bad effects and consequences in reality.
All governments are guilty of these mistakes.

Thank you Wyllow

TakeThat7

Labour are supposed to support the working class aren't they but conservatives brought council housing in and increased the discount which has changed people's life's for the better I thought Angela Raynor was over housing when she agreed to the discount reducing so quickly and quietly

Oh really! Just google...

"Council housing was first introduced nationally by government action through key figures Dr. Christopher Addison and David Lloyd George via the Housing Act 1919 (the Addison Act), though early local municipal projects had begun in the late 19th century" (DLG was Liberal of course)

"Dr. Christopher Addison was a member of both the Liberal Party and, later in his career, the Labour Party"

then

Maggie Thatcher destroyed social housing ripped it to shreds.
1980's.