Central London employment is heavily dependent on the rich who have descended on our town. We may not like them, but they are an indispensable source of job creation. To drive them out at a time when we need them most is utter folly,
But how about those in London with limited income and just the asset they live in?
The Dame will publish the Doc's reply to how he would break the news to some old age pensioner living out the end of his or her days in a flat or house valued at over £2 million and faced with having to sell up and move out.
Interestingly, we have heard nothing about the idiotically named Mansion Tax from our absentee MP, Sir Malc Rifkind or our absentee PM, Pooter Cockell.
The Rt Hon Vincent Cable MP
The House of Commons
London SW1
February 14th 2013
Dear Doctor Cable
Some advice please.....
My ninety six year old neighbor has lived in her Chelsea flat for close to forty years. She is now in extremely poor health. As executor I am privy to her financial position.
I have advised her the introduction of your proposed property tax will force her to leave her beloved flat.
I am certain you can provide suitable words of solace which I can convey, on your behalf, to this vulnerable old lady.
Woud you mind if I forwarded your advice to my local paper, the Kensington & Chelsea Chronicle: they will be keen to know the generalised advice you can provide to the very many frightened & elderly K&C residents in a similar situation to my neighbour.
Yours sincerely
It is a sad day when the only person lobbying for the interests of K&C residents is the Dame. What is the point of having elected representatives like Cockell and Rifkind if they are too lazy to do anything for us?
ReplyDeleteVive La Dame
Pisspot Rifkind
ReplyDeleteThe Mansion Tax take will be concentrated in K&C. Where on earth will most of those living in £2 million plus homes find an extra £20k per year to pay this tax? The eighty year old widow who has been living on a fixed income for 30 years?
ReplyDeleteWhat about pensioners who have seen their income from savings wiped out by interest rate cuts? The widows who relied on Lloyds Bank dividends to pay their bills?
ReplyDeleteThis is going to hit young couples living in places like Fulham, Wandsworth etc with mortgages.
ReplyDeleteTypical arshole Lib Dem thinking. Lucky they are goin' to get blown away next election
Obviously, with savaging of Miliband and Cable this must be a Labour blog!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI do not understand why anyone thinks this government cares, but they have acted in an unusual way for the first time, they started from the bottom up. They initially demonised disabled people, including very sick people, they have harassed some seriously ill people into committing suicide because they couldn't cope. What on earth makes anyone think they won't target elderly people who happen to be living in homes worth a million or two. Of course they will. and the very people who should be paying and supporting vulnerable groups are too busy laughing at it all. Mr Cameron has an estimated personal fortune of millions his wife has the same, if we are all in this together let him and his cronies care about the country on a minimum wage. And in case I am accused of being a Labour supported I don't care for any of the political parties they are full of unprincipled rot.
ReplyDeleteThe Dame should write to Greg Hands MP and ask for his help
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that there is this huge apparatus of politicians and Civil Servants who have got used to spending a huge amount of the wealth that we generate. Government spending is now running at more than half of UK GDP. This is power and they want to hold on to it. So now they are figuring out how to raise more money so that they can retain this power of spending. The politics of envy will be deployed with vigour. Tax the rich.....
ReplyDeleteWhat is needed is root and branch cut back in the spending. Starting with all the unnecessary stuff like £30 million on Chinese granite for Exhibition Road and $400 for Cockell to take his mate to dinner in New York.
What a pity Mrs Thatcher is no longer in Downing Street
There is plenty of money to support vulnerable groups Those in power choose to support themselves 10.00 is right. The country is run like the Royal Borough by spineless greedy people who don't care.
ReplyDeleteThe elderly widow will be able to claim Council Tax benefit - ooops, but the Lib Dem Tory Coalition government have just cut that too. Please explain the difference between forcing this elderly widow out of her home and the elderly widows and families who are already being forced out of their London homes because of benefit caps? These are the working poor that London depends on, not skivers and scroungers.
ReplyDeletePrecisely 10.19.
DeleteI'm a huge admirer of the Dame - though I don't always agree with her - but I'm appalled at this outcry about people who have money/property to be able to make choices, and probably family in the wings gloating about the cash they will inherit from selling the house to foreign investors when grandmama pegs it.
Meanwhile hundreds of poorer residents without that luxury are being booted out unceremoniously.
It's about time their avaricious relatives explained just how much their properties are worth, and that if they sold they could be extremely warm and comfortable elsewhere, or even in a smaller serviced flat in their neighbourhood.
DeleteOr perhaps the avaricious relatives want them to stay right where they are so they don't fall foul of inheritance tax, given that they may have persuaded them to hand over the deeds just a couple of years back? I know of what I speak!
Talk about culture of entitlement - social tenants are accused of refusing to move to an area they can afford, but oh no, not the property rich.
Double standards prevail I fear.
So what you are suggesting is that only very rich foreigners who can afford to pay the annual tax should be entitled to live in K&C and those income poor, who have lived all their lives in the Borough should move. You sound plain mean spirited and envious. As for your stupid remark about avaricious relations: it should not be dignified with an answer.
Deletewhether people like it or not social cleansing is happening under a Tory watch it is cushioned under the illusion that sick and vulnerable people are thieves and scrounging off the state. Therefore they need to be moved elsewhere out of sight, now it's the turn of people living in properties worth a million or two. They may have not been worth this when people bought them but they are now., For elderly people it's not just about how much something is worth financially it is their home where they have lived for years raised children and which they have worked hard to pay for. But Cameron, Duncan Smith probably on their knees praying in church whilst I type this don't give a damn. They are destroying the very things that make this country great and they have worse to come if they are elected again. They don't care.
ReplyDeleteI so so wish I'd had a camera and the front to photograph Cameron when he turned up at St Mary Abbott's with Starbucks coffee in hand, and was told in no uncertain terms to leave it outside.
DeleteWhat a double whammy that would have been. The PM showing exactly how much respect he has for religion, and exactly how much he cares really about tax avoiding coffee shops.
They respect no one they think residents and voters are stupid, that we haven't noticed that he, nasily Gove et al have no belief system, if they did they would not allow what is happening to vulnerable people to happen. We all know they attend St Mary Abbots to get their kids into the school forget the four local schools they passed by on their way to the high street or the 'actual' local children who have been refused entry to St Mary Abbots.
DeleteThe Tories and Lib Dems are working very hard to remove as many people of whatever class and socio-economic status as possible from Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham, so that they can be replaced with oligarchs and plutocrats, marble lined swimming pools and servants living in the third level basement. As David Prout, former head of planning in the borough, used to say - the merely rich are now complaining that they are being pushed out of the borough by the mega-rich. This is of course an inevitable consequence of uninhibited capitalism, a stable political system, good governance and poor planning policies. This government has had enough time to bring in a ban on basements but do not seem at all interested in the problem.
ReplyDeleteIn the 70's a slum cost £30k. Earnings are average. In the insane K & C, this improved but still modest home is now worth £3 million. Elsewhere in London the former £30k slum is worth £1 million. Elsewhere in the UK it's worth as little as £100k.
ReplyDeleteThe RBKC cartel of developers, estate agents and the council persuades non-coms to pay tens of millions to live in the area. Ordinary people on average incomes are unwanted.
Domestic rates are capped so the residents of a £3 million home pay the same as those in a £30 million pound mansion; or even a £100 million pound palace. Another scandal is that the UK government permits non-doms to avoid paying a penny in domestic rates.
I don't think anyone should be allowed to have more that £300,000 maximum. Anything more than that they should be forced to give to the State so that we can pay politicians more
Delete13.33, feeling the pinch Palmer? Not off with the family to Sharm El Sheikh for half term this year then? Tragic.But at least we will get a week off your inanities.
DeleteSt Mary Abbots School is a wonderful school with a great ethos and a superb Head Teacher, but it is a concern that people like Cameron can get their children into the school ahead of local people. He does not live and has never lived anywhere near the school. What a parent needs to secure a place for a child is to show 'sustained commitment' to St Mary Abbots Church. Not sure what this means but how does someone like Cameron who is never in London at the weekends show 'sustained commitment'? One glance at the parents' cars parked near the school in the morning to deliver children will show that many of them may show sustained commitment but do so from afar.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is exactly what is happening to Kensington and Chelsea it is becoming a place for rich people to live in part time whilst they eradicate the local communities.
Delete