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Owner Occupation for All Who Want It

There is a housing crisis in the UK,which has various components.  There is clearly a need to provide adequate temporary accommodation to all those who need it. At present local authorities only have a duty to accommodate those considered to be in ‘priority need’, which usually means they have dependent children, are fleeing violence or who have significant disabilities or health problem. As if being homeless wasn’t priority enough !   Beyond the agreed need to provide adequate ‘ emergency’ accommodation there is a need to substantially increase the supply of ‘ social housing’, provided by local councils and housing associations, and offering relatively secure tenancies at reasonable rents. The significant decline in the quantity of social housing since Thatcher’s Right to Buy legislation in the 1980’s has meant that more and more people, including families with young children, have to rent from private landlords, with no security of tenure and little protection from poo...
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My response to the ‘ Thin as Ice’ document published by Compass

The ‘Thin as Ice’ document is an important contribution from Compass and a welcome response to Labour Together’s triumphalism about the success of their ‘Red Wall focussed’ election strategy. This may have won Labour a huge majority, but it was with a low proportion of the vote and of the electorate and at the expense of losing supporters on its left.   Disappointingly lacking in ‘Thin as Ice ‘ is sufficient recognition of the growing severity of the Global Climate Emergency, which threatens to consume us all and is likely to be a central issue in the next General Election. There is also a lack of a strategy for achieving the ‘progressive coalition’, committed to electoral reform, which Compass correctly advocates.  In my opinion the climate crisis provides an opportunity to create such a coalition, possibly one which can last for two or three election cycles and certainly until proportional representation is implemented. The General Election of 2029 or late 2028 is onl...
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Review of Nomad Century by Gaia Vince

The author begins her clear and concise book with a stark warning.  “People are finally beginning to face up to the climate emergency. However, while nations rally to reduce their carbon emissions, and try to adapt at-risk places to hotter conditions, there is an elephant in the room: for large portions of the world, local conditions are becoming too extreme and there is no way to adapt”.  She then offers a solution which also addresses an increasingly toxic issue in politics, and in doing so provides hope rather than despair.  Vince  summarises the current reality of run-away climate change as others have done, and agrees with the need for economies and lifestyles to change in order to limit the extent of the coming catastrophe. She concludes however that even with maximum mitigation – renewable energy, changes to transportation and to the way food is produced and buildings constructed – the most realistic scenario is that global temperatures will rise by 3-4 degree...
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