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What horrors, eh?

Cheap housing is cheap:

She lives in one of 10 social housing flats in a development of 60 properties. They have a separate front door – known colloquially as a “poor door” – by the other residents’ bins.

They don’t have a lift or access to any parking.

But the bit that really stopped James in his tracks was that they have no access to the development’s garden. Other residents can take their dogs in it, but Jabeen’s children are banned.

Afterwards, James admitted he didn’t realise this was happening, saying: “Their dogs are allowed in the garden, but her children aren’t.

“Sometimes I get calls when you can feel your world view shifting slightly, feel your attitude to society changing.

“Jabeen’s on that list for me now.”

Shocker, eh?

They also don’t get access to the gym, the swimming pool or the under the volcano secret submarine lair.

47 thoughts on “What horrors, eh?”

  1. The Inimitable Steve

    My heart is pumping purple pish for ‘Jabeen’.

    What an awful society we are, forcing her to live, at our expense, in a multimillion pound property in Kensington.

  2. And economy class passengers are denied access to the first-class lounge at the airport too.

    Oh, the humanity of it!

  3. But seriously, this is a pretty high degree of decadence – those that get a free apartment don’t get access to the same facilities as those who’ve paid for one themselves do, and it’s some great injustice?

    Does Jabeen pay the same service charge out of his own pocket as the people renting privately / owner-occupying?

  4. If second class citizens get subsidised luxury housing then what class am I? Paying full market rent to live in a shoebox in London?

    Where is my JOB virtue signalling ‘concern’?

    I though social housing was about need. Clearly her needs are being well met, more than most middle class people.

    I have time for someone complaining they live in a rat infested damp hole in Tottenham as their needs aren’t being met. But this?

    I’d walk through a poor door to get that deal. Why aren’t my needs being met I say?

  5. There’s something fundamentally wrong about people with low or no income being able to live a £50k+ consumptive lifestyle at the expense of people who earn far less and support themselves.

    Living in a £1700pcm rental with free money and all your bills paid is a funny definition of poverty.

  6. I get that James O’Brien is LBC’s resident token leftie. But how can he actually believe this guff? Or is he just playing devil’s advocate?

  7. “Living in a £1700pcm rental with free money and all your bills paid is a funny definition of poverty.”

    Calculate the amount of the bottom third of properties in the UK for the size required. Pay people that money in Housing Benefit as a fixed amount, regardless of location.

    If some employer needs Jabeen’s skills in London, he can cough up. Otherwise, Jabeen can move to Workington or Hull.

  8. But it’s amazing (no, strike that, regrettably absolutely fucking normal) how many people think like this. That amenities are in some way “common property”. And the well healed middle classes are no better at this than the poor. Especially where their vermin are concerned.

  9. The Inimitable Steve

    If some employer needs Jabeen’s skills in London, he

    Jabeen’s a female. Her skills are:

    1) Making babies
    2) Collecting benefits
    3) Complaining that the kuffar aren’t giving her and her babies enough benefits

    Don’t worry though, they’ll pay our pensions!

  10. “If some employer needs Jabeen’s skills in London, he can cough up. Otherwise, Jabeen can move to Workington or Hull.”

    Quite.

    Something else I detest about this whole thing is that none of the bien pensants give the slightest tiddly f*ck about working people moving around the country to follow their job. Never care about these people being “torn from their communities” or “separated from their families”. But as soon as it’s effniks living at public expense, it’s roll on the 2k a month in housing benefits cos it’s inconceivable that they might have to move to – heaven forfend – zone 6 like some commuter sap who pays his own way.

  11. Imho one of the few fair points that leftists make is that in London housing benefit, in work benefits etc are an indirect subsidy to employers. Pay people enough to be your cleaners etc and live locally or do without them.

    If all the low paid were forced out of London things would change.

  12. “If all the low paid were forced out of London things would change.”

    Indeed. Other solutions would be found, rental prices would drop through not being artificially propped up through HB, and so on.

  13. Thing is when you agree about that with a leftist and say ok then so scrap the benefits and let the economy sort itself out they go mental, call you an evil neoliberal and say that the answer is to raise taxes on the businesses and give the poor more. That all that will do is end up pushing up the costs is lost on them, until they decide then price controls are the answer.

  14. Why, anyway, does working in London require that you live in Kensington?

    In Chicago and New York, using the tube means paying x per journey. The journey may be one stop, or 20 odd miles. Lower income workers live further out, where the rents are affordable.

    London works the other way.

    I’ve no idea how much subsidy applies in each case, however it does seem the US has the better solution here.

  15. My guess is the residents pay a much higher service charge to access those common areas. If she wants to cough up, I’m sure they’ll let her use them. The common areas are basically “Okay everyone, let’s all pitch in so we can have X, Y, and Z for us all to use”. If you don’t contribute, you don’t get to use them. I once lived in a place where some tenants said they no longer wanted to pay to use the facilities, and they opted out of the payments. Fair enough.

  16. One of the Sprog’s school friends lives in a social housing flat. This is in a dull town north of London. The dad works (AA man), mum still looking after toddler. They can’t use the car park so have to pay to park in the local street, if they save too much towards a deposit for their own place they get kicked out as being too well off to deserve a flat.
    It is a poverty trap.
    Not much sympathy for the family who can’t use the garden. That’s just tough. Go and find a local park.

  17. I’m a bit tired from working this week, but now I’ll pull out all the stops to ensure Jabeen gets even more free stuff she’s not really entitled to. To do otherwise would be my male white privilege sramping on Jabeen’s rights.

  18. Try reading the comments.

    Some people have earned money to afford the flat and the facilities. The others are being paid for by the state, who taxes those who have earned money. Are they suggesting all should have the same standard of living regardless of means? Maybe we should all have yachts and sports cars as well? Since when did access to a gym become a human right?

  19. When I lived in Miami Beach Towers in Hong Kong, I also did not pay the fees to access the gym and swimming pool, so also was not allowed to use them.

  20. @Andrew M

    I’m certain O’Bigmouth believes this as he is also sure that the NHS is the best health service in the world. Woe betide anyone who disagrees with him on air.

    As for him being LBC’s token leftie, what would you call most of their other commentators?

  21. Rehousing the Grenfell survivors in the leafier, nicer and much more expensive part of Kensington has got “Moral Hazard” written all over it.

  22. Well, James, there’s an easy solution.

    You’re a rich chap. Cough up her fees and enable her to use the garden. I don’t understand how a big softie like you can refuse to help the poor woman and her children.

    You’re so mean.

  23. We really are on the way to Venezuela here aren’t we?

    And if it happens, you just may find me converted to Scottish independence

  24. Anyone got any ideas about a decent country to emigrate to?

    I think we’ve got about 15 years left before Englandistan won’t be worth living in.

  25. @Rob Harries
    “If second class citizens get subsidised luxury housing then what class am I? Paying full market rent to live in a shoebox in London?

    Where is my JOB virtue signalling ‘concern’?

    I though social housing was about need. Clearly her needs are being well met, more than most middle class people.

    I have time for someone complaining they live in a rat infested damp hole in Tottenham as their needs aren’t being met. But this?

    I’d walk through a poor door to get that deal. Why aren’t my needs being met I say?

    +1

  26. “Jabeen’s a female. Her skills are:

    1) Making babies
    2) Collecting benefits
    3) Complaining that the kuffar aren’t giving her and her babies enough benefits

    Don’t worry though, they’ll pay our pensions!”
    +1

  27. Bloke in North Dorset

    Next up, free access to Virgin and John Lloyd gyms for everyone in social housing within a 5m radius.

  28. Mixed tenure developments are social engineering – the idea being that it is a ‘good thing’ for rich and poor and different ethnicities to mingle. Except they don’t, because generally most people want to mingle with people similar to themselves. Meanwhile, resentment accumulates. The social tenants (quite unreasonably) resent the superior facilities shared by the owner occupiers, and the owner occupiers deplore the social tenants’ different standards of conduct and behaviour. Almost inevitably, there’s at least one family of social tenants who are anti-social oiks who let their oiklets run wild.

  29. @Theophrastus
    “Mixed tenure developments are social engineering – the idea being that it is a ‘good thing’ for rich and poor and different ethnicities to mingle.”
    But in Kensington they can never really be mixed because those who are not rich enough to pay for private nor poor enough for social are not included – 80% are excluded so sorry Jabeen I don’t feel sorry for you.

  30. @AndrewC,

    Germany is pretty good. Cost of living lower than in the UK (though going up, especially housing), taxes about the same. Booming (overheating) economy, and politically very well run, with just one (albeit enormous) political mistake in the last 10 years.

  31. Just got in from work, thinking about turning round to go do some overtime so Jabeen can squeeze out another few benefit cheques at the local maternity unit…

    Just kidding, putting my feet up with a gin & tonic & thanking my lucky stars I don’t live anywhere near ‘social’ housing (the ‘anti’ is silent).

  32. I though social housing was about need

    ‘Need’ is a political decision.

    Next up, free access to Virgin and John Lloyd gyms for everyone in social housing within a 5m radius.

    Five metres? Fine by me. 😉

  33. BiF +1

    I can see the ten o’clock news now.

    Monday – Huw Edwards looking earnest ” The government has announced it will rehome all residents of incinerated flats in lush valuable property closer to the centre of town.”

    Tuesday – Huw Edwards looking more earnest “A series of mysterious fires in high rise buildings is of great concern today, the only possible cause the police can think of is that the immigrant residents are being targeted by the far right”

    There are people on the fucking breadline in Knowsley and Kirkby paying taxes to house economic migrants in multi-million pound Kensington apartments. We are fucking crazy.

  34. So if she was to pay (herself) the service charge for the property to be able to access the chargeable amenities we wouldn’t be discussing her.
    But because she isn’t able to get what other people will pay for on top of the cost of buying / renting the property they live in its somehow bad?

    I’ve a gym on the edge of an industrial estate near me. Its one that requires membership and people pay monthly or annually.
    I don’t use it at all – simply not wanting to pay a fee for spending 5 minutes a day there. Can spend 5 minutes at the local (free) park instead.
    I don’t complain about the gym – I simply choose not to use its facilities and therefore am not charged.

  35. JuliaM,

    I was born in a council house and lived in it for 18 years. Thanks to the grammar school system, I’m very comfortable, even a rich bastard in lefty terms. The last thing I want to do is live in a mixed socio-economic community with a high crime rate. I want to enjoy my G & T, beer, wine or champers safe in the knowledge that the allegedly disadvantaged can’t be arsed to come all the way to my place to steal anything.

  36. They don’t have a lift or access to any parking.

    Oh – the horror! A social-housing recipient has to worry about where to park, ffs.

  37. “Rehousing the Grenfell survivors in the leafier, nicer and much more expensive part of Kensington has got “Moral Hazard” written all over it.”

    V.good point there, BiF. When I lived in the leafier parts of Kensington I certainly encountered more than my share of Moral Hazard. Or maybe I was a Moral Hazard…
    It’s so hard to remember.

  38. @ Julia
    Yes the anti is silent in social housing. Just like the in is silent in EUcompetence.

    Observing, from a safe distance over the interwebs. I note that cladding only ever starts about 2-3-4- stories up. In social housing you’ll always get some oiks setting fire to wheelie bins & abandoned mattresses etc.

    So why does the cladding start so high? I (only guessing) think it’s because everyone involved, council architect, TMO, contractor, know it’s inflammable. Big queue at the Old Bailey soon.

    @magnusw
    Yep, moral hazard isn’t a nationalist thing. Expect fires from Marseilles to Maastricht. Come to think of it, a fire in Moulenbeek, only a stone’s throw from the Berlaymont… we could rehouse them in luxury offices.

  39. So they nearly get killed by living in a Kensington council flat, with a board of Kensington residents and Kensington councillors voted for by Kensington residents and now want to live in another Kensington council flat. The council may turn out to be blameless but surely you would rather take your chances elsewhere.
    Contrast with: in the days of private coal mines, if you lost your job due to an accident closing one pit, you wouldn’t accept another job with the same company’s sister pit, when other employers were available. Or would you.

    not have caused the

  40. Before nationalisation there was always the possibility of saying “You don’t want to work in Lord Bignob’s mine, that’s a death sentence, you want to try and get a place in Mr Bootstrap’s mine, he’s a stickler for safety” (and it usually was Mr Bootstrap and not Lord Bignob. And it would usually require relocation to a different area and competing with everybody else who wanted to work there.

    One of my great-great-grandfathers specifically moved from Nottinghamshire to Sheffield, and another *walked* from Middlesbrough to Sheffield, to work in the safer environment of the steel works instead of mining.

  41. The real problem is the ‘well to do’ people.
    Move them all out of central London and things would be fine. Why should the rich live in Kensington anyway. They are just consuming things in an unfair way. Don’t do enough breeding . And obviously not paying enough taxes.
    The government should sort this all out.
    So there

  42. I think you might be on to something there, John Malpas.
    Quite a few rich people have moved out of Moscow and Caracas.

    Given the right incentives….

  43. “Not much sympathy for the family who can’t use the garden. That’s just tough. Go and find a local park.”

    @Street Sparrow

    Indeed. These flats are 400 yards from Hyde Park.

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