"...so he can decide on politcal whim how hard working council tenants will have their rent money spent"Our Dave really does have some brass neck, doesn't he?My proposal, supported by most of the political groups and parties on Hounslow Council, was to free up £4m from Housing Revenue Account (HRA) reserves, to be be spent on estate and service improvements identified by tenants. This follows hot on the heels of the Rainbow Project (also criticised by Dave) in which £1.6m was released by us last year to fund community projects to be bidded for by tenants' associations.New Labour attempted to amend the latest proposal by recommending that the £4m be spent on priorities identified by the Hounslow Homes Board (which they have traditionally controlled and obviously believe they still control) rather than by the tenants.This was what the disagreement at Borough Council last Tuesday was all about (for independent verification of this simply watch the webcast at the London Borough of Hounslow website).The seconder of the New Labour amendment was none other than Councillor Elizabeth Hughes, Dave's wife. One of the reasons she gave for proposing that the funds be given to the Hounslow Homes Board to spend on improvements rather than giving the exact same amount the tenants was because £4m was too much to take out of the reserves! Think about it. In one fell swoop she had given the whole game away. As I recorded on my blog the day after the meeting: "New Labour by instinct strives to keep power, training and knowledge as the preserve of a select few. Just as it did during the Hounslow Homes Management Review in 2006, it demonstrated last night that it still considers the Hounslow Homes Board to be operating within its sphere of influence. Whether the Board sees things the same way is a matter for conjecture, but in some respects that is irrelevant. What New Labour was doing was protecting what it perceives to be its empire. That its empire-building antics have resulted in it losing control of the local authority itself in no way deters the mentality from presenting itself at every necessary opportunity. New Labour is as New Labour does. It is the Nature of the Beast."The biggest threat to the New Labour mindset comes not from any rival political party, but from those it needs to retain in a state of perpetual dependency in order to justify its own continued existence. That is why most of its members and followers will freely admit to detesting the ICG far more virulently than they detest their supposed ideological opposites in the political field."New Labour does not want to empower tenants, it wants to control them. The Rainbow Project has utterly confirmed my suspicions that over 35 years of Labour control our tenant leaders have not received even the most basic training in form-filling, administration or community leadership. Keep them in need, keep them indeed has been the philosophy under which they have had to operate.It is revealing to say the least that the only aspect of a budget which included a recommendation to include council rents by an above-inflation 6.95% (a situation forced on us by the government's housing subsidy system) that New Labour opposed was an initiative to empower residents on our estates.People like Dave Hughes will doubtless continue to pose as the friend of the poor and the vulnerable but these people have begun to see through them, as the local election results from Isleworth have demonstrated on the last three occasions.At Borough Council I thanked the New Labour Group for at least making its position clear and putting some clear blue water between its attitude to genuine community participation and ours. If Dave had any honesty he would defend his own party's totalitarian mentality rather than trying to rewrite the facts surrounding a debate which is in the public domain for anybody with an internet connection to view for themselves.
Phil Andrews ● 6311d