Welcome to Blair's Britain on the edge of society

Life can be hard enough without your own Government pushing you rapidly towards the edge.....
........this is only MY experience of MY life in MY circumstances in Blair's Britain (due to circumstances & lack of net access i'm only able to update this bimonthly)

Yes, Im well aware that unlike many millions in this world I'm very lucky to have enough food in my belly & a roof over my head-even if that roof has been regularly leaking waste water-sewage I guess if Vodka Val upstairs pisses in her shower-& rain if the wind blows in the wrong direction.

By spring 2004 so much waste water was leaking through my ceiling(10litres/day at times) that black mould & regular protruberances of 'stalactite' fungi would appear literally overnight. (perhaps those expert fungi guys among you could help me ID the species & enlighten me on the health implications).......still is, just a bit less

For all those shouts of What about the Landlord -You should move -Get Environmental Health in............

Hmmmmm......i'll tell you about them soon

I see the Tories have Hilary Armstrong as a Social Exclusion Minister-

Well I am one of those "hidden" socially excluded. Mainly due to illness & relative poverty (relative poverty is I understand living on 60% or less of average national wage)

My health & low income restrict my Net access hugely-I can only access it at £1/hour at a Net Cafe when it's open & I have enough money & energy to get there.
I have a computer I built bit by bit myself but I can't afford a phoneline let alone broadband.

Now, if the Government were to work with telecoms & as well as putting PUBLIC LAN on the benches around Westminster, actually fixed them to the privately rented 'slum' housing it REALLY WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

I could email family & friends, get support,look stuff up-God forbid even do a few hours a week of actual 'work' if I had wireless FREE NET ACCESS from my bed.

My illness means that planning anything is hard & just getting up, getting showered & dressed can use up a huge portion of my day's energy before I even start-making work & even a basic social life near impossible.

But imagine a world where your Government was enlightened enough to think laterally. Where people with my type of illness /disability were understood & catered for instead of being bullied &vilifiedd. With FREE LAN that could happen.

There could be the prospect of a really flexible approach.

Maybe if I had half an hour of energy I could log on from my bed to do a bit of Government or Party data processing/answer email queries. It wouldn't matter if it was 3am or if I didn't/couldn't log on for another few days or even weeks, or if I had a day where I had enough energy to do several hours.

So long as , say over a 30 day period I notched up 30 hours of processing time, the Government would 'reward' me with continued FREE ACCESS.
USE THE TECHNOLOGY TO BE FLEXIBLE ............

I'm not unemployable because I don't quite look aesthetic,or because I need special equipment, or because I dribble when I speak- IT'S NOT LIKE THAT.

My illness & the changeable nature of it on a weekly/daily/hourly basis -the disproportionate exhaustion I get from doing the simplest things, is the issue. The amount of time literally spent bedbound trying to rest/recharge to just 'cope' is the issue.

Oh-you want to know why 'slum housing' is like it is ?

Just imagine having a system where Private 'Slum' Landlords are responsible for the individual property maintenance. They happen to never renew the original 6month AST (assured shorthold tenancy)so effectively you have no protection in law. You can be evicted at anytime because you now don't even have the protection of the 6months before court proceedings.

So you bravely tell the Landlord about the plumbing/leaking problem that you can't repair yourself as it originates in another tenants place.

Can you withhold rent ? No, because any sensible person with a Slum Landlord has as little contact as possible & rent is paid direct from your bank or HB.
Can you go to Environmental Health ?- well in theory yes-but even reporting fire hazards in a communal area is dodgy & you cannot guarantee anonymity. To report to EH a problem inside your property that your landlord hasn't bothered to sort for months or even years identifies YOU as the trouble maker. Remember you have no AST, no protection (the 'assured' bit of AST is the landlord is ASSURED REPOSSESSION if they apply to the court),no capital to move-You are already in the cheapest private accommodation & you have poor health made worse by conditions & stress.

And what's more Local Authorities not only police the landlords, they also pay (via HB)the rents.....Is it really in their interest to enforce housing regulations that will improve the private rented housing(because there's nothing else)that is already double the rent of Social Housing ?

At least let's retrospectively put in place a system whereby ANY LANDLORD CONVICTED OF A HOUSING VIOLATION is relieved of their direct control of maintenance, freeing all tenants from this dangerous relationship & enabling tenants to report ALL maintenance direct to a Local Authority who should now have control & responsibility.

SOCIAL EXCLUSION IS ABOUT THIS TOO !

I'm off home to bed soon -& it's not even 11am !