Yesterday the Daily Mail reported that the Rotten Borough owned( in other words, you and I) many council house properties with values in excess of £1 million.Most normally run and businesslike councils would scratch their heads and say, "maybe it is not so sensible having millions of pounds tied in just a few properties in some of the most expensive streets in London: would it not be better to sell them off, releasing the capital to be invested in a greater number of cheaper units in less expensive areas”. Can you imagine a Housing Association holding such property?
The Cabinet member for Housing is Tim Coleridge. Tim is a decent and honourable man. Does he really believe the nonsense put out by the £3 million a year Propaganda Unit......
"we believe in mixed communities"
It is difficult to envisage Cabinet members with multimillion pound houses welcoming
Somali asylum seekers with 10 kids as a next door neighbour!
"we believe in mixed communities"
It is difficult to envisage Cabinet members with multimillion pound houses welcoming
Somali asylum seekers with 10 kids as a next door neighbour!
Left: Cabinet Member's House
If you are going to try to make a virtue out of a necessity at least come out with an excuse that makes some sense.
This council has a well known aversion to treating equally the extremes of affluence and poverty that exist in the Rotten Borough. To pump out such hypocritical rubbish insults the intelligence.
It is ludicrous to tie up, perhaps £40 million, in just 17 properties:dispose of them and redeploy the capital to buy many and more suitable council housing.
This is a very important wake up call from the Mail. Eric Pickles has asked Councils to use reserves to fund front line services in order to keep them alive. Since Cockel places a priority on funding Hollnad PArk Opera over N Kensington chairities, perhaps we could sell some of these £1 million houses which have no business housing asylum seekers and other social engineering initiatives
ReplyDeleteKensington and Chelsea is sitting on huge assets that it could sell and do without. I have inspected the Assets Register (still valued at 1970 prices) and my guess is that it is worth £30 billion. Land, car parks, shops, houses, all manner of things. In fact, the Council is the biggest land owner in the Borough, owning vast areas in N Kensington.
ReplyDeleteA 2 acre car park in Bayswater road is valued at £8,000. But we know that the Holland Park School playground just sold for £100 million!
Time to get the assets valued, Cockell, and start a debate about what we should do with them
Even the Daily Mail is aware of the mismatch between RBKC rhetoric and reality. The Telegraph's Peter Osborne has just written a piece on the lack of standards at the highest levels of society. We have the most unequal society in 100 years. RBKC may be the most unequal place in an unequal Britain. "Banker" says RBKC public assets are valued at 1970 prices! We are all in his/her debt for the information. Is it general practice for councils to act in this way? Are business rates & council tax paid at correspondingly low levels? Is it even legal? If so; why? This may well be the most important piece of information Hornet has so far unearthed. No wonder kids are rioting. No wonder the Dame's Empire grows daily.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of the 'social mixing' the idiot Cockell feels so strongly about extending to some Romanian gypsies moving next door.
ReplyDeleteCockell likes to pretends to be some enlightened Tory thinker of the landowning class. He is a total poseur-not even English but German!