Solidarity with all teachers today, especially those striking for better pay.

Eight year old is at home, and refusing to practice for his spelling test tomorrow because he doesn’t want to be a scab.

1,001 days since my little one made his debut.

The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis in Ealing

There will be 14,800 new homes in 23 new developments in Southall over the next few years. 14 units over 10 stories high, and 7 over 20 stories high. Up to 40,000 new residents (and their cars)!

One third of the total new developments in the whole of Ealing borough (only Acton is getting it worse).

So not happening so much in the ‘white’ or richer areas of the borough, for some reason.

None of these homes will be genuinely affordable to most people currently living in overcrowded homes in Southall or Ealing, as Studio bedsit flats start at around £300,000!

Most will stay empty until they are sold to investors from China, Malaysia, Singapore, Bahrain(!) where they are actively marketed by the greedy property developers.

The same property developers who gave former Ealing Council ‘Leader’ Julian Bell and new Ealing Council ‘Leader’ Peter Mason (also a Southall Green ward councillor) over £30,000 in recent years to holiday in the south of France at the MIPIM property festival in Cannes described as a “booze ’n’ hookerfest” by Private Eye Magazine.

Bell says, “it didn’t cost the taxpayer a penny”, but in Southall we are already paying with our health and quality of life thanks to the poisonous air from the development of the contaminated old gasworks site (due to complete in 2038!).

Town planner Mason says it was a mistake, and not what he expected(!).

Where will 40,000 new residents’ children go to school (and how will they get there and back), how will they get an appointment to see a GP, which hospital will they go to when they need emergency treatment, and how will they get there on the roads already regularly gridlocked by too much traffic?

Worth taking the time to have a look at stopthetowers.info/other-cam…

Cllr Mason recommended we read Bob Colenutt’s ‘The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis’.

So I did.

What Colenutt says (and he has a wealth of experience in local authority housing and planning, and in the community resisting property developers), is that developers do have too much power (as Mason argues), but also that local councils and councillors do not do enough to resist, do not have the negotiating skills (contrary to how Mason originally described the importance of trips to MIPIM to ’negotiate hard’), and too readily embrace the ‘financialisation’ of the land and property market brought about by David Cameron’s and Nick Clegg’s ConDem government in 2010.

So now, we have a very real housing crisis fuelling the huge profits of private developers, all facilitated and egged on by mostly Labour councils too easily rolling over and allowing them to build fewer and fewer ‘genuinely affordable homes’ (because “where’s the profit in that?”).

What Colenutt says loudly and clearly is that without ordinary people’s and communities’ resistance it would be so much worse, and that to all intents and purposes councils and councillors are in bed with the developers.

Non-fiction: The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality behind the Housing Crisis by Bob Colenutt 📚

Christmas tree and lights up. Boys did most of the tree decorating. Much quicker and less stressful than previous years.

Kids' stuff

I have successfully replicated this study at home, and can attest to its reliability and validity.

An ethnographic study in Madrid charted the gradual “take over” by the child (accoutrements like toys, furniture, and special foods, and the removal of “dangerous” or breakable items) of the domicile, leaving less and less “adult” territory (Poveda et al. 2012).'

The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings by David F. Lancy 📚

Both boys are staying at home today. Big kid bounced into school yesterday after recovering from two days of fever, cough and sore throat, but didn’t eat his lunch. Think he’s just tired. Little kid has a raging temperature, but eating ok.

Public concerns over remediating the toxicity of the land… have not been addressed in the revised plans…. “no details have been provided” on the proposed remediation strategy.

Brighton Gasworks developer changes plans to include affordable homes

Washed up

✅ Made breakfast and packed lunch for Kid A.
✅ Dropped Kid B at nursery 😭.
✅ Dropped Kid B at school.
✅ Collected kids’ clothes from store.
✅ Listened to the end of The AbsoluteLee podcast and the start of The Prince of Aberystwyth while sitting in traffic.
✅ ☕ and breakfast.
✅ Prepared chilli con carne.
✅ Work call.
✅ Unblocked bath drain.
✅ Received grocery delivery.
✅ ☕.
✅ Washed up…

Making pizza today, so defrosting some fresh yeast.

Meantime, it’s breakfast. Egg and home fries for me. Weetabix for the little one, and bagel for the big one.

Big one is in the bathroom feeling nauseous because of the smell of smoked paprika.

Abandon all hope

I reported an abandoned car to my housing association.

It’s been left in our little communal car park since the middle of last month, taking up a neighbour’s parking space.

It’s got no tax or MOT.

I previously reported it to the police, who got back to me to say “it’s not of interest” to them, and to my local council, who have apparently done nothing. Presumably because it’s not classed as being on a public road.

Let’s hope the HA removes it.