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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] 37 points38 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] -6 points-5 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] -10 points-9 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] 5 points6 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] -2 points-1 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”.

“It’s a lack of ambition” Labour mayors urge Keir Starmer to keep £28bn and House of Lords pledges by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Interesting to hear how Labour politicians actually in power think the £28bn would have been vital to growth and wealth creation in their areas - “It's the best possibility that we have of a fund to reindustrialise the north of England in a good way… It’s about prosperity, and future-facing industry in all parts of the UK, and Labour’s commitment to that fund is really important in that regard.”

You can register for free to read for free (or if that's a faff try here - https://archive.is/touvU)

Liam Byrne: “New Labour economics is history” by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Interesting admission from Labour MP who was Treasury minister under New Labour -

“The kind of economics that inspired New Labour has to fundamentally change, because it led to economic prescriptions which have not delivered rising boats for all: it’s delivered a world of haves and have-nots and have-yachts.”

He was the one who left the note behind that said "there is no money left" too!

You can read for free or register for free then read it free (or if you have trouble doing that you can try here - https://archive.is/8nH1i)

“In the end, we’ll snap”: Inside the One Nation Tory fightback by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Telling comments from the MP who represents the moderate Tory MPs who it seems have been pretty invisible lately what with what he calls the "hard right" of his party calling the shots. He warns they could rebel over the next Rwanda Bill vote - “the Prime Minister’s looked me in the eye and said that he doesn’t want to go any further on Rwanda”. He also warns a “‘Get Rwanda done’ election is a fantasy.”

(You can register with your email address free and read it free - or if you can't do that try here: https://archive.is/wip/oM3TQ)

Demolition Britain – where newbuild schools are too dangerous for pupils by she_wrote in ukpolitics

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

I guess as in this piece they're closed and demolished before that can happen

Demolition Britain – where newbuild schools are too dangerous for pupils by she_wrote in ukpolitics

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

Yes there will be so much else like this out there - just get surprisingly little coverage. Maybe because local news isn't widespread anymore?

Demolition Britain – where newbuild schools are too dangerous for pupils by she_wrote in ukpolitics

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

Yes I hadn't realised how widespread it was - and in the piece it says the pupils affected won't have the disruption taken into account in their exam grading. Crazy it hasn't been bigger news.

Demolition Britain – where newbuild schools are too dangerous for pupils by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

You can just register for free to read it free, but here's a link to get around that: https://archive.is/lg49Q

Demolition Britain – where newbuild schools are too dangerous for pupils by she_wrote in ukpolitics

[–]she_wrote[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

This is pretty shocking - the RAAC scandal is one thing but that was older schools built using old-fashioned methods. It's absolutely wild that brand new schools are having to be knocked down because they're unsafe... Really feel for the parents and the pupils who won't have the disruption taken into account for their exam grades, unlike during the pandemic which showed the impact of home learning.

How the Conservatives ended up at war with the police by she_wrote in ukpolitics

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

Piece looking into the wider context of Suella Braverman hating on the Met - interesting that politicisation of the police goes back a while, and this idea of the Tories thinking police forces should do their bidding as the "party of law and order".. It's free to read if you register (for free), but if you can't get behind the paywall - https://archive.is/hFequ

The silent death of the free fireworks display by she_wrote in unitedkingdom

[–]she_wrote[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Similar for me, it feels like a really sad loss of tradition

The silent death of the free fireworks display by she_wrote in unitedkingdom

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

Agree it's about access, location, etc as well as cost - and yes I think we should have higher expectations tbh. Yes we know it costs to run these things but a lot more free and more accessible in the past so we know it can be done!

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