Interesting Links for 09-02-2014
Feb. 9th, 2014 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Assortative mating: People marrying similar people is raising income inequality by 25 percent.
- Famous Movie Scenes In The Style Of The Ottoman Empire
- Boromir Death Simulator
- Who wants to see a lung. In a box. Breathing. ?
- The International Cometary Explorer is returning to an Earth no longer capable of speaking to it
- Topic: Introduction to the Mill CPU Programming Model
- Million-year-old Norfolk footprints: Just who were 'Homo antecessor' and how did they arrive in Britain?
- One Ad to Rule Them All - using Tolkien quotes as advertising slogans.
- How many software developers would it take to change a lightbulb?
- "hey are you cool" - encounters in Day Z
- BBC chief: no more comedy shows with all-male panels
- The Bedroom Tax is Dead here’s why
- Who knew that there were advances going on in the technology of "doors"?
- New Blog Piece On Woody Allen To Settle Everything
- Crocheted My Little Daleks: Friendship Is Extermination
- The Weight of Rain - a fantastic talk on the visualisation of data from science/space.
- Why are there are still more than 1,000 tax reliefs in use despite Coalition pledge to simplify the system?
- Age-appropriate chores for children
- The arc of a mermaid relationship (rather gorgeous photographs)
- How soon is too soon to make jokes about a tragedy? (36 days, apparently)
- Ice T Records Dungeons & Dragons Audiobook
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no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 08:24 pm (UTC)On the one hand, I can understand that there is an overbearing pressure on council rented housing, and it can make sense to 'free up' houses with more bedrooms for families that need them by 'encouraging' folk who don't need loads of bedrooms to move into rented properties with bedroom numbers that meet their needs rather than bedroom numbers that more than meet their needs.
However:
On the flip side, many of those affected are very vulnerable and these houses are _homes_. At a personal level it absolutely breaks my mum's heart that she is under constant threat of being evicted to a smaller property. Firstly, the smaller properties are like gold dust (and this is part of the overall problem) and secondly, the single bedroom properties that do come up tend to be utter shitholes that have come up _because_ they are utter shitholes.
Beggars can't be choosers say the Tories and, quite frankly, it's a policy that could only have come from someone who has _no idea_ what it is to _be_ poor. And perhaps the situation would not have arisen at all if the last Tory government hadn't started the policy of... encouraging councils to sell off large swathes of social housing. It's a problem of the Tories own design and yet again it's the most vulnerable who're getting kicked in the fall out.
Thanet District Council (part of Kent County Council - and both regularly featuring in Rotten Boroughs in Private Eye) made the spectacularly sneaky move of sending out 'contracts' to each tenant where they were required to identify and agree the number of bedrooms that the property has - with many not understanding the implications. My mum's third 'bedroom' is a small 'box room' but TDC have thrown the 'contract' at her saying that she's agreed it has 3 bedrooms. Change of use? No legal aid any more, of course. Coincidence?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 09:55 pm (UTC)Keep going little lung!
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 03:54 pm (UTC)