good for bristol

Monday 9 September 2013

Bedroom Tax demo 5pm Tuesday 10 September on College Green

Bristol Council are meeting to discuss a report on bedroom tax evictions.  BADACA have called a demo to show opposition.

BADACA (Bristol And District Anti-Cuts Alliance) need to sort their frigging name out.  Anyway, back before April Mayor Ferguson promised no bedroom tax evictions 'till a cross-party working group on the matter reported back.  This group is now presenting their report to the full Council, recommending that evictions are used as a last resort.

Green councillor Gus Hoyt chaired the working group so some morons are using this to attack him saying he wants to evict people.  But they're morons so ignore them.

Truth is no-one in any faction of the Council wants to evict people for bedroom tax but they have to keep it in reserve as a stick to threaten people with, alongside the carrots of discretionary HB and transfers.  Really they just want the whole stupid idea of the current Government to just go away.

In practice every council in the country feels the same - apart possibly from some diehard Tory ones who feel in an ideal world they'd be allowed to gas council tenants - and are hoping for a Labour victory in 2015 to bring an end to the crap idea.  They should be able to hold off on evictions until then, at £15 a week for two years each tenant will only build up arrears of about £1500.

And in Bristol the Council knows they'd face opposition in the courts and on the streets if they tried to evict anyone.  People would turn out for that.  Probably just the usual suspects waving Palestine flags and shouting about lizard conspiracies but people would show up at least.

Update:
Photo from the demo - I think some people had gone into the Council House for the meeting at this point. Note the pleasing lack of lefty paper-sellers. The anarchos have a dog on a string, of course.

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