Tonight at the Full Council meeting in Ipswich we had Cllr Pope the Tory Housing portfolio holder informing us that Margaret Thatcher was the saviour of social housing, and to make the evening even more absurd the Lib Dems nodded their heads in agreement and went and voted for his amendment!
Labour was asking for Full Council support in a motion that asked for the Government to secure Tenancy rights for Council House occupants. Instead of support all we got was a 10 minute "Thatcher" worshiping session.
For many of us on the Labour side this was hard to stomach, especially as this morning all councilors received a letter asking us to join Borough Council staff in celebrating the 90th anniversary of the first council house in Ipswich. Tories and Lib Dems could not see the irony in this.
Allenby Road, Ipswich - where our first two council houses were occupied in 1920
But just to show where the Tory loyalties lie we were then informed by the Tory leader how they intended to solve the housing problem in Ipswich - no, they were not going to show great leadership and build on North Ipswich with a master plan, their great idea?? Build on Council House back gardens! You couldn't even make it up, Maggie would be pleased.
1 comment:
Alasdair - I am afraid when it comes to national policy on Social Housing Labour are living on past glories that are now 60 years out of date.
Given that it is such a high priority could you outline the successes of the 1997 - 2010 period particularly given the fact that the Deputy Prime Minster for most of those years was John Prescott - so you can't blame the lack of action on the fact that the leader for most of those years was someone whose only experience of council housing was watching the hovis adverts.
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