ITNet sacked!
Posted: October 7, 2000 Filed under: Hackney Council, ITnet Comments Off on ITNet sacked!After 2 years of benefits chaos, Hackney Council has given bungling benefits company ITNet the boot.
The 10 year contract worth £70 million was terminated last week amid scenes of back-slapping from the Labour group. Clearly they feel that they’ve got something to celebrate.
While the IWCA is glad to see the back of ITNet and its money-grabbing attempt to clear up at the expense of working class residents, we’d also like to point out that it was Hackney Council who put them there, Hackney Council who ignored complaints about their service right from the beginning and Hackney Council who are now apparently celebrating a job well done.
Until we get councillors who actually represent working class people in the borough we’re bound to have a repeat of performances like this.
We’ve got rid of ITNet , now let’s get rid of these councillors.
Mobile Phone Masts – untested, unsafe, unwanted
Posted: October 4, 2000 Filed under: Community Safety Comments Off on Mobile Phone Masts – untested, unsafe, unwantedThe IWCA has been active in the last couple of weeks on the issue of mobile masts. These masts have been springing up all over our estates with little, if any, warning and even less care for the concerns of tenants in the blocks. While Hackney Council pockets thousands every year from the phone companies, local tenants get no say in their installation and not a sniff of the cash !
The IWCA has been leafletting estates where phone masts have been put up, calling for full consultation with residents, a say in where the masts can and can’t go, and a fair share of the money gained for use in the tenants’ associations if they do go up.
Mobile phone masts have not been properly researched and that research which has been done points to dangers, especially to young children.
You can bet that if these masts were going up anywhere near the homes of the middle classes , the council would be deluged with complaints, but no, bung ’em anywhere on the estates and hope that no one notices…
Once again, a case of working class people being ignored and dumped on from a great height , in this case a couple of hundred feet.
1. No new phone masts should be located within 100 yards of council estates or schools.
2. Ballots on every estate to see if tenants want the phone masts down. If they do, break the contract and take them down.
Social Cleansing
Posted: October 4, 2000 Filed under: Gentrification / Regeneration Comments Off on Social CleansingThe Peabody Trust have put half page adverts in the Highbury & Islington Express for their new flats at Cremer Street, but are not advertising in the Hackney Gazette. This is because they are all about colonising Hackney – aiming to house City workers and the Hoxton Square bar crowd.
Peabody’s “award winning” flats at Murray Grove were said to be “affordable” – but the cheapest rent there is £146 a week. Peabody showed no interest in housing young people and overcrowded families from the Wenlock Barn estate next door. Their wider aim – shared with all four political parties on the Council – is to replace the working class majority with the middle class – a process known as “social cleansing.”
The Peabody Trust was formed “to house the poor of London.” They should rent the Cremer Street flats at Council rents to people on the waiting list.
Autumn 2000 Newsletter
Posted: September 23, 2000 Filed under: Community Facilities, Community Safety, Hackney Council, ITnet, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Newsletters, Privatisation / Sell Offs Comments Off on Autumn 2000 Newsletter
Hackney Independent – Stanway area edition
IWCA local newsletter for Geffrye Estate, Harman Street, Rosalind & Cordelia
Hackney Council are about to make up to cuts of at least £22 million – on their own figures – which may end up being nearer £40 million pounds worth of cuts. They say that this was because they were overspending, but have you noticed any “overspending” round here? They can still afford to pay Council boss Max Caller £3,000 a week and pay all the councillors’ expenses, but our essential services are on the line.
When they came round asking for your vote last time, how many councillors said that they would be bringing in these sort of cuts? None of them did, and they have no mandate or support to do so. More than that, these services don’t belong to the councillors – they are ours. We have paid for them with our rents and council tax several times over and no councillor has the right to sell them off.
Our community is under attack from two sides. Not only is the Council cutting back our essential services, but they are encouraging developers and housing associations to gentrify our Borough and ‘socially cleanse’ the Borough of us – the working class majority.
Resistance to both these attacks must be from us – it’s our estates and community that is most affected. We can’t expect any favours from the Council. Instead we need to decide what which essential services we cannot lose, draw a line in the sand and plan what steps we will take to defend them. Parents from two nurseries have already occupied them and are keeping them open themselves rather than let the Council close them.
We should never let Labour get back in. The Labour government has proved no better at funding Hackney than the Tories. Labour now runs Hackney Council in an alliance with the Tories and it is these parties that are bringing in the cuts. The Hackney Labour Party is now a middle class party that has no interest in representing the working class.
And the Lib Dems are no better. They are very good at telling you what you want to hear when they are in opposition, but they helped get the Council into the mess when they ran the Borough with Labour. In neighbouring Islington the Lib Dems run the Council and are bringing in their own £2 million cuts plan.
There is no point in looking to any of the political parties on Hackney Council. The IWCA is seriously considering standing in this Ward in the next Council elections We need to replace the middle class parties on Hackney Council with working class representatives. The time for protesting to the Council has gone, we need our own representation.
IWCA needs your help
The IWCA was set up to involve and represent the interests of the working class majority in Shoreditch. We felt that the political parties were no longer able to do this, and that the developers were being given a free hand to gentrify our area.
You only ever see the other parties at election time, but the IWCA has tried to get round to every door asking about repairs, ITNet, anti-social behaviour or phone masts.
The IWCA needs your help. How much help you can give is up to you – but if you can help deliver newsletters, take a petition round your block or even make the tea at meetings there is a part you can play. And by attending our meetings you can help make decisions on what issues we take up and how we campaign on them.
If you want to know more about the IWCA you can attend the meeting below or phone us on 07000 752 752. If you can get onto the internet, look up our website on www.hackneyiwca.fsnet.co.uk
Phone masts – unsafe and unwanted
Have you seen the phone mast on top of the building on the corner of Kingsland Road and Pearson Street?
This mast is emitting pulses of radiation up to 217 times a second, and anyone living within 100 yards is affected. That means York Row, most of Harman Street and the nearest blocks on Geffrye Court.
Hackney Council are taking a small amount of money from the phone companies and not telling us about the health risks.
Federal Law in America, and similar laws in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden have made it illegal to place the masts close to homes, schools and hospitals. But the Council let them be put up next to our estates, and have even let one be put up opposite Laburnum School. Were you consulted before this phone mast went up? And has anyone told you about the health risks? This is another example of how the Council treat us like second class citizens. After all, have you ever seen a phone mast on top of a private block?
The IWCA believes that there should be no mobile phone within 100 yards of council estates or schools. We also believe that there should be ballots on every estate to see if tenants want the phone masts down. If they do, the Council should break the contract and take them down.
If you would like a free information pack on mobile phone masts, call the IWCA on 07000 752 752 and leave your details on the answerphone.
ITNet
Everyone knows how hard it is to get your housing benefit or council tax benefit paid. The Council has a legal duty to get you your benefit within 2 weeks of you giving them your details – but instead the Council blame ITNet, the private contractor they brought in to do the job for them. While we have no time for ITNet – a firm that made £10 million profit a year but is causing suffering to thousands of hackney people who are not getting their benefits – the buck stops with the Council. Typical of them, they privatise a service and then pretend that it’s not their problem.
The Council got a lot of good publicity by saying they had sacked ITNet – well they haven’t. They are still in place and we are still not getting our benefits paid.
Those of us who are on benefits, or whose family and friends are on benefits know what a big issue this is. Our middle class councillors have no idea what it is like not being able to pay the rent, and that’s why they didn’t sack ITNet a long time ago.
The IWCA held a surgery in the Geffrye Estate Community Centre for people who were having trouble with ITNet. We arranged for benefits experts to attend to give people advice, and have since followed up everyone who attended. We aim to hold another surgery soon, but if you are in need of immediate advice, call the IWCA phone number – 07000 752 752 – and Carl Taylor will get in touch with you to help with your benefits application or to give you any other support.
letter to Hackney Gazette about ITnet
Posted: September 21, 2000 Filed under: ITnet, Media Comments Off on letter to Hackney Gazette about ITnetAt last!
A solution to the problems of not getting your benefits paid by ITNet. Just move out of the borough to your country retreat!
Unfortunately this is only an option for the likes of Lib Dem Councillor Neil Hughes and not something the majority of us can afford.
Isn’t it about time we had councillors who were prepared to stand their ground and fight for the interests of Hackney’s working class majority ?
Helen Caterwell – letter in Hackney Gazette 21st September
Independent councillor is Shoreditch's way forward
Posted: August 20, 2000 Filed under: Elections, Media Comments Off on Independent councillor is Shoreditch's way forwardLetter in Hackney Gazette 10th August 2000
We read Myrna Shaw’s letter in the Gazette with interest and would agree that the way forward is to stand independent candidates in the council elections.
It is clear that the four main parties in Hackney are only interested in the middle classes, so we believe it is essential that independent candidates represent the interests of working class people (and of course this includes many pensioners).
With this in mind we are seriously considering standing candidates in the Shoreditch Neighbourhood in the 2002 elections and would welcome discussion with Mrs Shaw – and other interested individuals or tenant’s representatives – in deciding how best to serve the interests of this working class majority.
We would urge anyone who wishes to discuss it to contact us at PO Box 48, 136 Kingsland High Street, E8 2NS
Dan Carter, Hackney Independent Working Class Association
Extracts from responses to above letter
“I don’t mince my words and will never speak diplomatic, sugar pill English. I told Sedgemore the middle-class had won and that was England done. If anyone broke English working class values it was Labour. At least from the time of Brown and Wilson, if not earlier, the old streets were torn down in ‘slum clearance’ to make way for the ‘inner city.’ Labour did nothing to preserve anything that was truly and not just ‘trades union working class’, and they still don’t.”
“I read your letter Gazette letter with interest. But I do have my doubts! The campaign of course would be the thing, but what chances do you think you have of obtaining a poll tax type putsch in Shoreditch?”
“I do not mean to be negative, but it is going to be a long hard slog, with a large element of distrust of the organisers the first hurdle to overcome.”
“It’s about time someone stood up for working class interests. Labour abandoned us twenty years ago. In Hoxton we’ve tried the Liberals and even the Tories. I’m prepared to give you a go.”
“I agree with standing in the next elections, and there’s still two years to prepare for it. Couldn’t you stand in Clapton as well?”
“Standing for the working classes alone is divisive. Although I own my own home and run a business, I want my streets kept clean and a low council tax just as much as my cleaner does….”
"Colonial times" in N16 Magazine
Posted: August 15, 2000 Filed under: Gentrification / Regeneration, Media Comments Off on "Colonial times" in N16 MagazineThis gem featured in the “N16 magazine”, a free mag with adverts for upmarket restaurants and various “witty” pieces:
You could rename N16 “Colonial Times” because that’s the truth of it. Or “How to turn a working class area into your local village”. Your rag makes me puke! It’s a pat on the back for how successfully the middle classes have swarmed in. And your obsession with the 73 bus! Sure, it’s big and red and maybe a little fantasy gets projected – but for chrissakes it’s just a bus! You walk around Hackney like it’s an old curiosity shop. The letter in your last issue said it all – “an interesting cultural mix of people who appear to live alongside one another harmoniously”. We’re not schoolchildren or there to entertain some fantasy.
A woman said to me in the park once that she wouldn’t let her kids watch Postman Pat because there weren’t any black people in it, and I looked around the playground and all I could see was “wellys” (people from Tunbridge Wells). You’re either squatting and calling yourselves anarchists, or just plain buying up the place. You talk as if it’s a community without acknowledging the fact that you destroyed an ailing community to get what you want. A friend was outcast from a playgroup because she wanted to send her kid to private school. One woman said “I’d rather send my little Harry to a Stokey school and rub shoulders with thieves than send him private”. You strut around like you’re street hip. You even get Ali G’s jokes, but it takes a bit more than sticking little Milo in an Arsenal shirt to be a fan.
Please excuse my lack of grammar, only I’m not pretending. Put that in your e-mail and freebase it!
Yours most angrily
D. Kidmon
PS Have a lovely Festival
IWCA reply to above letter
I agree with what D Kidmon wrote in the last edition of N16 – your magazine should be renamed “Colonial Times.” It is a magazine for people who spend holidays “up the Dordogne in a camper van” (p18) or like Sally Watson (p8), who you quote as saying that she is having such a problem finding a private nursery for Georgia and Tabatha that she “may have to move to Highgate just to find one.” The problem is that the Watsons will be replaced by more rich young people who will move in and continue to take over what pubs and cafes we have left, and show off to us about it in the pages of N16. Your coverage of the mobile phone mast issue could have been based around the magnificent resistance put up by the Tenants’ Association at Hawksley Court, but instead gives them just three lines compared to the Council’s two paragraphs, while worrying about the effect on house prices.
As a political organisation we wouldn’t put it the same way as D Kidmon, but he is talking about the effects of the “social cleansing” of Hackney. As the middle class takes over more and more of the Borough, the IWCA will continue to seek to involve and represent what is still Hackney’s working class majority.
Anyone wanting to get in touch can contact us at Box 48 136 Kingsland High St, E8 2NS, or you can look at our web site on www.hackneyiwca.fsnet.co.uk
Peter Sutton, Hackney Independent Working Class Association
IWCA letter in response to articles on ITNet in Hackney Gazette
Posted: June 8, 2000 Filed under: ITnet, Media Comments Off on IWCA letter in response to articles on ITNet in Hackney GazetteYour stories in last week’s Gazette on the ITNet fiasco raise a couple of interesting points but perhaps a couple more could be taken into account as ITNet’s £70 million contract is just the tip of the iceberg. The company made over £10 million profit last year and one of its directors, Bridget Blow, made herself a tidy £289,000 after all her bonuses and benefits were taken into account. It’s almost insulting to think of the contrast between Ms. Blow and the people of Hackney (and Islington too) who have suffered at the hands of this private company, living on run down estates and having to wait months for the money we’re entitled to, while the directors of ITNet pop the champagne corks at their AGM and laugh all the way to the bank.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised; after all, private companies set out to make a make a profit and Hackney Council should have realised that before jumping into bed with one of them. If, as it seems, there’s no way out of the contract now or penalties that can be imposed on the firm for its disastrous performance, one thing we can do is offer support to tenants who’ve been affected. The IWCA has run one successful benefits advice surgery on the Geffrye Estate so far and is set to run more over the borough in the next few months, while the group Whose Benefit ? has been set up by victims of ITNet and can be contacted at PO Box 55, 136 Kingsland High Street, London, E8 2NS. The council and the company they’ve shacked up with may want ordinary people to feel powerless but there is a lot we can do.
Dan Carter
Hackney IWCA
gap between council workers and management
Posted: June 5, 2000 Filed under: Community Safety, Hackney Council, Media Comments Off on gap between council workers and management“Speaking to a road sweeper I discovered that there is a huge gap between workers, who have pride in the Borough, and officials and management, who are not Borough residents. He said workers could only see to complaints when they had an order to do so from above. As I am sure that many workers in the Borough are aware of the conditions of the roads, I can only assume that the staff who sit in Shoreditch have little interest in the workers in Stoke Newington.”
Stoke Newington resident and cyclist Norman Bright takes on the Council’s senior managers
(Gazette 1 June 2000).
But our councillors, who do live in the Borough, are no better.
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