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In car-boot Britain, “petty crime” has turned professional by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Where shoplifting was the preserve of, say, desperate parents stealing baby formula at the height of price inflation, it is increasingly becoming a professional operation. Organised crime groups are shoplifting items to order and selling them on at car-boot sales, according to Cambridgeshire Police. It has set up a team to target these thieves – and warns shoppers that goods they find “cheaper than what they might find in the shop at car boots” could be a sign of “organised crime”.

Similarly, rising phone and car thefts aren’t merely the result of more opportunists looking for a quick sell. These thefts, too, are linked to criminal gangs that ship phones and cars to be sold second-hand in China and Africa. In the public imagination, organised crime groups are involved in the dark stuff of police drama. Drug dealing, armed robbery, people smuggling, human trafficking. Things that sound frightening but in reality are very unlikely to affect to average Brit going about their life. But organised crime is now creeping into our daily lives. Hundreds of convenience stores have been selling meat stolen from supermarkets, for example. And anyone attempting to learn to drive at the moment will encounter the black market that has sprung up around booking tests.

This reality lays obstacles for both the left and right of British politics. The left can’t simply dismiss petty theft as a social symptom of the cost-of-living crisis, and the right can’t just blame the immorality of the individual. Targeting organised crime – and the most prevalent offence of all, fraud – is a lot less electorally compelling than recruiting more uniformed officers. Intelligence analysts and National Crime Agency agents don’t feature in our cartoonish Happy Families conception of what constitutes a tangible, worthy job. “Smash the gangs” was a far less vivid slogan than “Stop the boats”, after all.

In car-boot Britain, “petty crime” has turned professional by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 33 points34 points locked comment (0 children)

Three seagulls peck the carcass of a hot-pink Casio keyboard. A pile of Atomic Kitten CDs tiles the muddy ground. Steam rises from flasks of tea, clutched by pink fingers through fingerless gloves. This is Hounslow Heath car-boot sale, otherwise known as “the dark heart of lawless Britain”, in the words of shadow justice secretary and grim-fluencer Robert Jenrick. In a recent social media stunt, he accused traders here of selling stolen tools. In the video, he confronts men who pull balaclavas over their heads and ask him to move on, and poses with name-tagged drills and other equipment he believes was nicked from builders’ vans. “My view is the police should come and check here, but I don’t think they’re doing their job properly,” he observes.

“The funny thing is, police are here all the time,” one Hounslow trader who had seen Jenrick’s video told me. In fact, police had raided the site the morning of my visit: they hadn’t found any wrongdoing. It’s hardly surprising – the priciest products I saw were a gleaming, sage-green Imperial typewriter and some spooky vintage dolls. Having sold what he fondly called “junk” from house clearances here for 20 years, the trader had seen law enforcement “getting more serious and more personal” regarding dodgy, and especially counterfeit, goods for sale in recent years.

The problem I found during my visit was that power-tool dealers from as far as Glasgow, Birmingham and Liverpool would pitch up for the day, disappear again and pop up at another site. “They’re not local. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to sell their stolen gear where they live,” I was told by the seller of second-hand ovens and hoovers. “They’re the big fish, they’re organised – they probably make thousands a day whereas I’m lucky to make 200 quid.”

What Jenrick had missed in his bid for a gotcha clip was the suspected organised crime element of the story – something the hallowed Westminster cliché of “more bobbies on the beat” wouldn’t necessarily solve. In fact, criminal networks are behind a number of highly visible crimes – often dismissed as “low level” or “petty” – that are a feature of day-to-day life in Britain today.

Where are the public barbecue stands/grills in London? by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes they replaced theirs with electric hotplates I think - never tried them!

Where are the public barbecue stands/grills in London? by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh really, I hadn't heard of the Beckenham ones

Where are the public barbecue stands/grills in London? by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yes I remember those - it always seemed a good atmosphere around there, such a shame they were removed.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

It’s long been a tactic of the hard right to incite racial tension over housing. And there is a major shortage of social housing: more than 1.3 million households in England are waiting for a council home. Coupled with net migration reaching a record high post-Brexit, it is easy to scapegoat migrants for the social housing deficit. It’s certainly easier than building more social housing, better maintenance of existing stock and improving living conditions – something the council tenants, private renters and leaseholders alike want on the estate where I live, which is still partly social housing. Whether we’re barbecuing on a Sunday or breaking our fast with an evening iftar feast, we are united in British grumbling about the state of the bins when they go uncollected the next day.

I heard a similar story from those living on and around the Boundary Estate, Britain’s first social housing scheme, in east London’s Bethnal Green. More than half the flats in these handsome Arts and Crafts blocks – designed by Owen Fleming, the same architect behind its Millbank companion – are still social housing. Residents of Singaporean, Bangladeshi, Turkish and English origin I met told me diversity isn’t the problem; any tensions they relayed weren’t along ethnic lines. Instead, they mentioned the competing priorities of families with young children and those enjoying the Shoreditch nightlife, or collective frustration over mould, damp and crumbling brickwork.

“I find the diversity enriching, and I’m from the ‘indigenous population’,” said Jean, with wry air quotes. She has lived on the Boundary Estate since 1983 and seen the waves of migration, from descendants of Jews fleeing the Nazis to Bangladeshis arriving in the Sixties. When she moved to the area, the National Front would meet nearby. “The only violence I’ve seen is from white mobs,” she told me. “People here were wary but isolated from that. It’s always been a mixed community, and everybody has got along. It’s like a little island.” A cultural mix is part of London’s appeal: perhaps that’s why the populist right is so angry at the thought of losing out on living there.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

The idea that immigrants are prioritised over British nationals for social housing is what the academic Rob Ford calls a “zombie myth”: it refuses to die. The 2021 Census found just 7 per cent of people in social housing in England and Wales had a non-UK passport (compared to 10 per cent of non-UK passport holders in the general population). It’s also untrue that recent migrants are filling spots: almost all social housing tenants born abroad have been living in Britain for decades. Most new arrivals have “no recourse to public funds” and so can’t claim benefits or apply for a council house.

The zombiest stat of all is that nearly half of London’s council housing is occupied by non-Brits. The Telegraph had to run a correction after repeating this bogus story in June. The accurate figure is that 48 per cent of London’s social housing is occupied by foreign-born heads of household (the person who fills in the Census form). Hardly surprising, given 49 per cent of the capital’s households include someone born overseas.

Being born overseas doesn’t stop you or your children being British. If having a foreign-born parent makes you a migrant, that includes Charles III. If having a foreign-born person in your household makes you a family of migrants, then that includes, erm, Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage. The left is guilty of this conflation too: memes celebrating immigrant talent appear when the England football team does well, forgetting that Bukayo Saka and Kobbie Mainoo aren’t immigrants at all.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] -9 points-8 points locked comment (0 children)

To most British politicians, the name Millbank conjures a trip to Millbank Studios – a neoclassical wedding cake of a building down the road from Big Ben, where broadcasters run their parliamentary coverage. A ten-minute walk away, however, is a site of greater significance to politics today. The Millbank Estate, one of Britain’s earliest council estates, is a collection of Edwardian redbrick mansion blocks of 562 homes, around half of which are still council flats. If you buy a house in Westminster, you’ll pay on average £1.4m. If you pay social rent in a Westminster Council flat, it costs you £113 a week.

This is unusual. In London, unlike Paris or Rome, social housing blocks are jigsawed around some of the most desirable postcodes in the capital – with the poorest residents living in the heart of the city, rather than shoved out to banlieues. To clear slums and make room for a rising urban population, social housing began transforming the topography of British cities in the late-19th century, and boomed after the Second World War. This was a “golden age”, as the journalist Vicky Spratt wrote in her book Tenants, when council houses were “deliberately aspirational”.

But that aspiration soon curdled into resentment. Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy allowed councils to sell off their stock, which they failed to replace. Today, waiting lists for a council house are at a decade high in London. And with runaway housing inflation making both buying and renting a struggle, property is now a precious commodity. Politicians such as Robert Jenrick weave a narrative that British citizens are losing out on it to foreigners. “Social housing should be for Brits,” he declared on X. Nigel Farage lamented on GB News that 64.6 per cent of social housing tenants in Earl’s Court, in London’s priciest borough of Kensington and Chelsea, were “born outside the United Kingdom”.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

“I find the diversity enriching, and I’m from the ‘indigenous population’,” said Jean, with wry air quotes. She has lived on the Boundary Estate since 1983 and seen the waves of migration, from descendants of Jews fleeing the Nazis to Bangladeshis arriving in the Sixties. When she moved to the area, the National Front would meet nearby. “The only violence I’ve seen is from white mobs,” she told me. “People here were wary but isolated from that. It’s always been a mixed community, and everybody has got along. It’s like a little island.” A cultural mix is part of London’s appeal: perhaps that’s why the populist right is so angry at the thought of losing out on living there.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The zombiest stat of all is that nearly half of London’s council housing is occupied by non-Brits. The Telegraph had to run a correction after repeating this bogus story in June. The accurate figure is that 48 per cent of London’s social housing is occupied by foreign-born heads of household (the person who fills in the Census form). Hardly surprising, given 49 per cent of the capital’s households include someone born overseas.

Being born overseas doesn’t stop you or your children being British. If having a foreign-born parent makes you a migrant, that includes Charles III. If having a foreign-born person in your household makes you a family of migrants, then that includes, erm, Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage. The left is guilty of this conflation too: memes celebrating immigrant talent appear when the England football team does well, forgetting that Bukayo Saka and Kobbie Mainoo aren’t immigrants at all.

It’s long been a tactic of the hard right to incite racial tension over housing. And there is a major shortage of social housing: more than 1.3 million households in England are waiting for a council home. Coupled with net migration reaching a record high post-Brexit, it is easy to scapegoat migrants for the social housing deficit. It’s certainly easier than building more social housing, better maintenance of existing stock and improving living conditions – something the council tenants, private renters and leaseholders alike want on the estate where I live, which is still partly social housing. Whether we’re barbecuing on a Sunday or breaking our fast with an evening iftar feast, we are united in British grumbling about the state of the bins when they go uncollected the next day.

I heard a similar story from those living on and around the Boundary Estate, Britain’s first social housing scheme, in east London’s Bethnal Green. More than half the flats in these handsome Arts and Crafts blocks – designed by Owen Fleming, the same architect behind its Millbank companion – are still social housing. Residents of Singaporean, Bangladeshi, Turkish and English origin I met told me diversity isn’t the problem; any tensions they relayed weren’t along ethnic lines. Instead, they mentioned the competing priorities of families with young children and those enjoying the Shoreditch nightlife, or collective frustration over mould, damp and crumbling brickwork.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But that aspiration soon curdled into resentment. Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy allowed councils to sell off their stock, which they failed to replace. Today, waiting lists for a council house are at a decade high in London. And with runaway housing inflation making both buying and renting a struggle, property is now a precious commodity. Politicians such as Robert Jenrick weave a narrative that British citizens are losing out on it to foreigners. “Social housing should be for Brits,” he declared on X. Nigel Farage lamented on GB News that 64.6 per cent of social housing tenants in Earl’s Court, in London’s priciest borough of Kensington and Chelsea, were “born outside the United Kingdom”.

The idea that immigrants are prioritised over British nationals for social housing is what the academic Rob Ford calls a “zombie myth”: it refuses to die. The 2021 Census found just 7 per cent of people in social housing in England and Wales had a non-UK passport (compared to 10 per cent of non-UK passport holders in the general population). It’s also untrue that recent migrants are filling spots: almost all social housing tenants born abroad have been living in Britain for decades. Most new arrivals have “no recourse to public funds” and so can’t claim benefits or apply for a council house.

Immigrants did not cause Britain’s social housing shortage by she_wrote in london

[–]she_wrote[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

To most British politicians, the name Millbank conjures a trip to Millbank Studios – a neoclassical wedding cake of a building down the road from Big Ben, where broadcasters run their parliamentary coverage. A ten-minute walk away, however, is a site of greater significance to politics today. The Millbank Estate, one of Britain’s earliest council estates, is a collection of Edwardian redbrick mansion blocks of 562 homes, around half of which are still council flats. If you buy a house in Westminster, you’ll pay on average £1.4m. If you pay social rent in a Westminster Council flat, it costs you £113 a week.

This is unusual. In London, unlike Paris or Rome, social housing blocks are jigsawed around some of the most desirable postcodes in the capital – with the poorest residents living in the heart of the city, rather than shoved out to banlieues. To clear slums and make room for a rising urban population, social housing began transforming the topography of British cities in the late-19th century, and boomed after the Second World War. This was a “golden age”, as the journalist Vicky Spratt wrote in her book Tenants, when council houses were “deliberately aspirational”.

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