Wow I'm such an activist!

So I wrote a letter to a councillor. Well, sent an Email. It was about the fact that they are demolishing the Battersea Park Adventure playground to and replacing it with an unmanned standard playground. Basically removing a huge community resource for 8-13 year olds and replacing it with a minor resource for 4-8 year olds. I felt that the councillor had a duty to protect the playground so my email was quite succinct. It read like this:

I didn't get into any of the extended politics behind it. I felt that it was unlikely I would get a reply of any sort, and if I did it would be an apology and some sort of waffle about resources and priorities. What I did receive however surprised me. An email with no text in the body except:-

and 3 attached files; 1 document:

and 2 photos:

Most of what I have to say is in my reply:

I am pretty sure I won't get a reply this time, but I promise to update this post if I ever do. The protesters are off the site and the bulldozers are levelling the place ready for another unsupervised excitement free little kid's play space.

Benefits cap rant the next...

Do you support the benefit cap?


The local housing allowance cap is already making children homeless, and the cap will make no discernible difference to your tax bill or the country's finances. Shaving a few million off the welfare bill sounds good in principle but it is billions that matter here and the problems being created have their own cost issues.


Perhaps you imagine that it is all about 'work shy scroungers with 8 kids living in Mansions in Pall Mall off tax-payers-money'


Well...31 per cent of families affected by the various proposed welfare reforms will be families with two children or less. 


Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea are the big news, where 35,000 homes are cut off from those who need a bit of help to make ends meet, but I know people being pushed out of my local areas of Wandsworth and Battersea too. It is the same across many areas of London.


People cannot just move to a cheaper nearby area. Newham is going to be facing twice as many claimants as there are affordable options and in Croydon, 17,000 people will be chasing 10,000 properties.


So all benefit claimants will have to move to....?


Margate? Hastings? Possibly.


Wherever it is, then it will quickly be a poverty stricken ghetto with no opportunities, because the huddled masses have arrived.


It isn't going to be any less awful outside the South East either.


Birmingham - 34,500 housing benefit claimants will be chasing 23,000 low-cost houses, Liverpool - 21,000 people collecting local housing allowance chasing 12,000 homes.


So the poor are being pushed out of the cities into ghettoes, where they can be ignored, and look forward to lives of violent criminality.


Or death.


You know those cases where someone with a 'learning disability' is abused and murdered by 'violent chavs'? Those are going to rise to a level where they get even less media coverage than they do now because they aren't exactly sexy news compared to a photo of someone from TOWIE carrying a shopping bag.


The government isn't making a moral standpoint about 'scroungers', it is engaged in social engineering on a massive scale and children and the disabled are the main victims.


It IS unacceptable and it IS that simple.

Benefits Cap Rant

Originally posted on Facebook, edited from an e-Mail I caught myself about to send to a daytime talk show:-


The biggest problem with the benefits cap is not that it will thrust a huge number of children into a position of poverty (if it was even one child then that would be too much), nor that it will increase the existence of ghettos segregated by income (which it obviously will).

The problem is more that it is being painted as an economic issue when it is nothing more than a further attempt by the coalition to grab the MORAL high ground, when the problem the country has is economic NOT MORAL. The amount that the treasury will save is allegedly £600 million, which isn't a lot in terms of the deficit, and will affect the average hard working taxpayer not a jot.

The press coverage meanwhile pits the squeezed middle against the benefit dependant when they should be directing their anger at what the Occupy Camp refer to as the 1%.

Top Shop, Vodafone et cetera have avoided paying BILLIONS in tax and spending £2billion to tackle tax avoidance could raise an estimated £30 Billion. The super-rich have screwed the economy and rather than fix it they are endeavouring to turn the moderately well off against the poor.

The single mother who needs help to stay where she lives and not uproot her kids from their school and community is not the enemy, nor are the disabled, or any of the poor, tired, huddled masses.

Hello!

Welcome to my brain! I have decided to start this blog for my political rantings, because I suspect they annoy a lot of people on my social networks, plus I wouldn't mind them reaching an audience beyond the 7-10 of my real life friends who are kind enough to click like or post comments.

I suspect I shall get very bored of updating this very quickly. To be honest, if there are ever 3 posts here it will be a tremendous surprise. I plan to start by posting stuff I posted elsewhere, but I shall endeavour to make this the new hub of my ranting.

I suppose that I should make my personal politics clear before I start, but I would prefer you to take that information from the huge amount of sense that I speak.

You are my favourite reader,

Regards

Dan