#YOU CAN NOT SELL THE MAJORITY ON 'ABOLISH THE POLICE' RIGHT AWAY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

linddzz · 2 years

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I've been having some Thoughts on how the push to vote in the past has given people the wrong idea of what voting can accomplish but also why it's still something you should do. I'm not gonna try to convince people who are ideologically against voting (though I have some raised eyebrow Opinions on people who stick to ideology over actionable results/goals set in reality that I'm probably gonna end up ranting about here) but I WILL push back against the people who seem to want everyone else to also not vote and get all high and mighty at any mention of voting.

Some basic facts right off the bat;

1) Voting ON ITS OWN will not stop a fascist state

2) Voting will not Fix Everything

3) If you ever approach voting as only going for who you Believe In you will be disappointed. Politicians are not your friends. They are not heroes. I don't even think 99.8% of them are good people. Ideological Purity and politics don't mesh in reality.

4) Our system sucks. It is flawed. You can't change that by voting. You also won't change it by NOT voting and being smug online about it.

5) Voting Is Step 1. It is the LEAST you can do for civic change.

Bold on the last bit for a reason! You can not change the system from within the system, but voting is not the same as say, becoming a cop thinking you can change the entire institution by being "one of the good ones." A vote does not lock you into the system. You can vote and then go flip a cop car over and spray paint a confederate statue. You can vote and then join a co-op for community improvement.

So why vote if it won't fix shit?

Well for one thing it should be noted that there's a REASON Republicans are putting a lot of focus into make it harder for you to vote. If that doesn't set off a little ding then idk what does.

Anyway my view of voting is something I said for the 2020 election; it's a tourniquet. A tourniquet will not heal a wound. If you ONLY use a tourniquet without any other actions you just delay the inevitable, but the tourniquet is the Step One to give you more time to take those actions.

Voting won't stop a slide into fascism but it can help put breaks on. Things suck and haven't gotten better but you can't convince me it wouldn't be so much worse if Trump won in 2020. There would be MORE hyper conservative judges being put in place, erosion of rites would be happening WAY faster. You vote to slow the bleeding down even slightly so you have less of a battle than you would otherwise.

As soon as you stop thinking of voting as "this is how I will make a difference by voting for who I believe in and like" and think of it as harm reduction you can get way more strategic about it. An example from my red state is how a lot of leftists handled the primaries. There's no way someone even left of center or moderate is going to win here. It just won't happen! So for the primaries a LOT of left leaning people changed their voting registration to Republican to vote for the least awful guy.

They were all awful. All of them are harmful. But ONE was an open supporter of Q-anon endorsed by Trump and his goons. A lot of votes went to the one who still had shit views but at LEAST said Biden won the election and made wishy washy noises on abortion (as opposed to loudly yelling about banning all abortion and birth control. It's understood he will still likely vote against birth control, but he also seems to care about appealing to moderates so you can push back at him more). He may switch later but there's less of a chance of that guy going full throttle on overturning voting rights, and it was understood that guy would be less of an uphill battle than the other one. That guy won. I know other people in deep red states doing the same thing.

This also is a state to state thing. Here you can change party affiliation for the primaries then change again for the main election, which is what everyone is doing because we accepted that we'll probably end up with that shithead but we're still going to vote against him because we want it to be clear that there IS opposition here.

There's also local elections which are SUPER important. Every left community outreach org I've talked with or read up on pushes local voting and they're probably accomplishing more than the average online leftist arguing The Ideal Revolution. We GOT here because the right wing is VERY good at mobilizing a voting base and they have spent DECADES purposely starting from the local level up. Q-anon and openly white supremacist groups are targeting city councils, school boards, all that.

Go to ballotpedia.org, look at everything down the ticket. Then look up that person's social media. See who they're friends with. See what they were posting about two years ago. Look at who follows them and who they surround themselves with.

It's boring. It also often just takes me a few hours or less in an afternoon to look it up and vote down the ballot. The president really is the LEAST important part of the vote except for how they can shape their party direction (moreso for Republicans than Democrats. Republicans tend to fall in line with whoever their Top Man is. Because they're fascist adjacent at best and outright fascist at worst.)

Also most importantly for a lot of you lefties (especially younger ones):

Ideology and Reality are often not compatible. Do not trust that a great Revolution will overturn everything and Fix It because a lot of problems are rooted in the cultural, not political. Revolutions more often than not end in such massive death and upheaval that a fascist power just comes in and promises order anyway. Also even if you DO pull off a revolution, the moderates and neolibs and conservatives will still be here. People will still be complicated and won't fit into ideology. And I think it's pretty substantial that so far I only see a whole lot of talk about how the system needs to be torn down but not what could realistically take it's place. People have been trying to make a perfect system of government since we started living in tribal groups bigger than a village. An ideology is good for an aspiration and basis "if I could have my ideal what would that look like?" but reality will almost never fit that ideal, and you have to be able to learn how to not throw out "slightly better" because it isn't perfect.

I am not a politician or political scientist. I'm not a sociologist. I do not know how to "fix it." I don't think anyone solidly does. But I know that just saying "the system sucks I won't participate" doesn't change the system, and could cause greater harm to those who are in more danger from it than me. I hold my nose and vote based on the approach of harm reduction (even a TINY reduction of harm is a reduction). I expect all politicians to be rat bastards, I try to help my community and friends and work towards what I actually want from that level up. The vote is the base layer.

(anyway Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards recently put it really well. He's a half feral anarchist bastard Man who also believes voting can't fix the system or even change much, but he said he still votes because "voting won't cause more harm and there's ALWAYS a chance that I'm wrong about what it can accomplish." Basically if he's wrong and voting DOES make a slight difference, then he is causing harm by not doing it.)

#also im trying to emphasize Republican vs Conservative #bc i ideologically disagree with conservative politics on almost all levels #but i also know people who consider themselves conservative and like. arent terrible fascists.#hey also NEOLIBS ARE ANNOYING AND CAN BE A ROAD BLOCK OFTEN BUT YELLING AT THEM AND BEING SUPERIOR DOESNT CHANGE MINDS #OH MY GOD LEFTISTS NEED TO BE BETTER AT MARKETING AND OUTREACH #YES ABOLISH COPS SHOULD BE THE GOAL BUT IT ISNT REALISTIC RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THE COUNTRY IS FUCKING SOAKED #SOAKED I TELL YOU. IN A CULTURE OF SEEING COPS AS HEROES. EVEN IF ITS HEROES IN A BAD INSTITUTION.#BROOKLYN 99 STARTED FROM PEOPLE WITH THE IDEA THAT YOU COULD HAVE GOOD COPS #YOU CAN NOT SELL THE MAJORITY ON 'ABOLISH THE POLICE' RIGHT AWAY #if you see people trying to make it a better sell by describing a system of reallocating funds to social work to reduce the load on police #and you go UM BUT THERE SHOULD BE NO POLICE SO DIE #you help nothing! you arent making that moderate neolib go 'wow theyre right!'#im YELLING OVER THIS SO MANY OF YOU FUCKS PUT IDEOLOGY OVER REALITY #THE MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY IS MODERATE. THAT IS REALITY. IT NEEDS TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR WHEN FIGURING OUT WHAT CAN ACTUALLY BE ACCOMPLISHED

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hermionegranger · 4 years

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- “Why aren’t we talking about black on black crime?”

If you’ve expressed support for Black Lives Matter, spoken out against police brutality, or written a modest column in the past few weeks, you’ve probably been asked (or chastised) for not mentioning how many more black people kill other black people compared to the police.

There are answers to the question, “Why aren’t we talking about black on black crime?” But critics of Black Lives Matter don’t want to hear them.

If they cared, they’d be asking about crime within the African American community year-round, as many black activists and neighborhood leaders do. But as Doughboy told Tre in 1991’s “Boyz N the Hood” (and it’s still true today), “Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood.”

When an opponent of Black Lives Matters talks about “blacks killing blacks” it’s almost always to deflect attention away from police brutality. As if one issue makes the other more acceptable.

When someone commits an act of terrorism against in the United States, which rightfully leads to anger and sadness, no one asks, “Well what about how many Americans kill other Americans each year?” Because that would crazy, now wouldn’t it?

But, by all means, let’s talk about “black on black crime.” You’ve probably heard a statistic like this before – The majority of black people murdered are killed by other black people. That’s true, but also misleading. The overwhelming majority of white murder victims each year are killed by white assailants. So, when’s the last time you heard the term “white on white crime?”

As shocking as it may be for some to hear, people generally commit crimes against people they know or live near. If you want to have a real discussion about crime, let’s talk about the factors that contribute to it happening in the first place.

White supremacists have attributed the fact that crime rates are higher among African Americans than whites to people of color being biologically more prone to violence. In reality, crime is directly linked more to poverty than race or any other factor.

According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, People living in households with income below the federal poverty threshold are twice as likely to commit a violent crime than people in high-income households, regardless of race.

We live in a country where the poverty rate is more than twice as high among black Americans than white. And that has as much to do with 400 years of systematic racism than anything else.

White supremacists will tell you slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago. So, get over it. Yet, just as that was a hard sell to African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, it’s equally hard to accept 30 years after Rodney King and the L.A. Riots and weeks removed from the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

Thomas Abt, a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, writes:

“Racial disparities in crime and punishment are real, but they have been produced in large part by a sustained campaign of persecution by whites against disempowered minorities, particularly African Americans. Officially, that effort has ended; overt racial discrimination has been prohibited by law for decades. Nevertheless, the brutal legacy of that campaign — racism, segregation, concentrated poverty, and violence — remains.”

None of this necessarily means a black person being killed by another black person is more or less significant than if they were killed by a police officer. Death is death and murder is murder.

Yet, what if it were captured on video? Could a victim’s family take solace in knowing evidence exists for that person to be prosecuted? That’s usually the case. But that may not matter for George Floyd. It certainly didn’t matter in the cases of Eric Garner or Tamir Rice.

What is someone supposed to do when you can be murdered legally? When police can harass you and then choke you out because you’re selling loose cigarettes or when a cop can kneel on your neck as you cry out “I can’t breathe" while his colleagues stand by and watch.

That’s why police brutality is its own unique horror. And African Americans are two and half times more likely than whites to be killed by law enforcement.

When you step outside every day knowing you’re twice as likely to be killed by someone sworn to protect you just because of the color of your skin, you’re dealing with a different type of fear. Don’t let statistics, ignorance or flat out racism cloud that. - Troy L. Smith

#black lives matter #blm #antiracist

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

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Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry

The spring and summer of 2020 brought a reckoning for many Americans, with a global pandemic causing mass unemployment and the murder of George Floyd spurring protesters across the country to decry police violence against Black lives. For the restaurant industry, these events brought every failure and uncomfortable truth to the forefront — and exploited and jobless workers suddenly had plenty of time for such conversations.

Social media was flooded with infographics about the racist origins of tipping and the inequities that have kept the hospitality machine running in America since its birth at the blurry end of legalized slavery in this country. Capitalism itself was under a lens, the unfair concentration of power and profit magnified with every report of another billionaire doubling or tripling wealth. Replacing this economic and political system is a long shot, but anti-capitalist practices have existed in bars and restaurants for years now. So what does this look like, and why should everyone care?

Fair Wages

Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production of goods and services is privately owned rather than state-owned, with those private owners reaping the sole benefit of profits. That leaves the “means of production” — bartenders straining your Margarita and line cooks preparing your al dente pasta — in the hospitality industry exposed to exploitation thanks to notoriously slim margins for success. And since the hospitality industry, like most in this country, was built on the backs of Black people, it should be surprising to no one that the mistreatment of BIPOC, immigrant, and undocumented workers remains prevalent, despite their significant majority as employees in restaurants today.

One of the most basic ways an establishment can ensure the safety of its staff is by providing stable pay. Sadly, tipped workers who serve guests in bars and restaurants often make a subminimum wage, which is legal in all but seven states. Organizations like One Fair Wage seek to end this subminimum wage, but so have business owners.

In 2015, the practice of paying restaurant staff a higher but un-tipped wage cropped up noticeably. Prominent chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., began including service fees in guests’ checks in order to facilitate the change, while now-closed Bar Agricole in San Francisco raised its prices 20 percent to do the same. Chef Amanda Cohen was an early advocate for abolishing tipping in New York City when she adopted the practice at her Lower East Side location of Dirt Candy.

A Level Field

One of the most prominent supporters of the movement was Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer, who announced back in 2015 that USHG would gradually end tipping and raise menu prices at all of its restaurants. Citing pay disparities between back- and front-of-house employees, which often fuels an unspoken feud between the two, the move to eliminate tipping at such a large and influential restaurant group convinced others to follow suit. This past summer, Meyer reversed the company’s “Hospitality Included” policy, meaning that servers at Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe (to name just a couple) are once again working for tips.

Where Meyer posited that staff should benefit from guests wanting to tip generously in the wake of an economic crisis, Stephanie Watanabe, co-founder of Brooklyn wine bar Coast and Valley, found the opposite to be true. “We instituted a universal living wage, which was super important for us,” she says. “I think we did that in the summer after realizing that folks were not tipping.”

With tips plummeting, Watanabe and her partner Eric Hsu began to have the conversation about livable wages with their staff. “It really solidified for us when Covid hit: People before profits, period. It’s non-negotiable,” she says.

Thanks to her background in filmmaking in Hollywood, Watanabe brought outside perspectives to the argument against tipping, too. The “Most Favored Nations” clause utilized in movie contracts for smaller independent projects — paying the A-list celebrities the same amount as the supporting players — inspired her to try something similar. “We saw the dynamic between dining room and kitchen [employees], and it really bothered us,” says Watanabe of the tipped FOH/untipped BOH schism. “So for me, this was a way to level that and say, ‘No. We’re not going to pay this person less because somehow their job is deemed less valuable than the person who is able to go to get their WSET [Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification].’”

The friction between staff, coupled with the usual caveats of tipping — tipped workers experience higher rates of sexual harassment and people of color are tipped less than their white coworkers — led to a discussion with staff about experimenting with a fixed wage. “We understand the deep roots that tipping has and how ultimately, it’s incredibly, incredibly harmful and racist, and that doesn’t sit well,” Watanabe says. “Every single person, including the owner, gets paid $25 an hour.” This anti-capitalist strategy, which values humans over money, brings her staff equality and stability. It is not, however, an easy way to run a business in America.

“Every month, we’re losing money. But we’re like, ‘and?’” says Watanabe. “Then so be it, then our business can’t survive. Period. And that’s a shame, but it’s also a function of capitalism and society and these systems and structures that exist.”

With profit margins hovering around 1 percent at places like Coast and Valley right now, most investors would be hesitant to risk it all, but many of Watanabe and Hsu’s backers are friends and family who truly believe in their vision. The team recognizes the real struggle that most bars face. “There are good folks out there, and the problem isn’t [that] owners don’t want to pay their people. Some of the time, it’s that they can’t,” Watanabe says.

Even for the big players, a seemingly minimal loss in income might come with strings attached. “Who knows if they’ve got investors and people that they’re beholden to that don’t share their commitment to those things?” Watanabe says. “Then oftentimes, you don’t have a lot of control over it. And that’s where capitalism kind of just comes in and wreaks havoc.”

Nobody is saying that flouting our capitalist tendencies is painless. “To do the right thing is really, really, really hard in this world that we live in,” Watanabe says. “I think it’s like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. But for Eric and I, … we can’t violate our own integrity, and so maybe that means we’re bad business people. And at the end of the day, I’d rather be a bad business person than a bad person.”

A High Road

Andrea Borgen Abdallah, owner of Barcito & Bodega in Los Angeles, was once a general manager at Union Square Hospitality Group’s Blue Smoke in Battery Park City, Calif. “I became really interested in that model and what it hopes to achieve — especially when it came to dealing with the inequity between kitchen staff and waitstaff,” she says. Borgen Abdallah followed USHG’s lead and did away with tipping less than a year after Barcito’s September 2015 opening.

Thanks to the restaurant’s proximity to the L.A. Convention Center, Borgen Abdallah noticed business was very cyclical. “[On a] Monday, I would out-sell a Friday night, and there was no method to the madness,” she says. But eliminating tipping created stability for her employees, ensuring that shifts would be predictably fruitful on any given day. “I was also able to introduce healthcare as a result of that,” Borgen Abdallah says — no small feat, given that the Affordable Care Act only requires insurance to be offered if an establishment has a larger staff of 50 or more full-time employees.

In March of 2020, with the shutdowns brought upon by the rise of Covid in the U.S., Borgen Abdallah closed her restaurant and made two important decisions. First, Barcito would continue to pay for the health insurance of its furloughed employees. Second, it would keep jobs available for anyone lacking a solid safety net. In this way, even though the restaurant was unable to provide the same hours, it was able to keep its doors open and its vulnerable staff cared for.

Last year, Barcito was also one of the first restaurants to participate in High Road Kitchens — a group of restaurants working to provide food on a sliding scale to low-wage workers, healthcare workers, and others in need. One Fair Wage, which fights to end subminimum wages nationwide, oversees the program through RAISE (Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment). Participating High Road Restaurants like Barcito commit to advocating for fair wages and increased racial and gender equity through hiring, training, and promotional practices.

Borgen Abdallah’s dedication to the fight for better wages began while working directly for One Fair Wage in the past, even making trips to Washington, D.C., and her commitment doesn’t seem to be waning. “I think this pandemic certainly exacerbated a lot of the issues that we’ve had for a really long time,” she says. “And I think a lot of people wanted to sweep [them] under the rug and finally were forced to reconcile.” Now, with all that is known about the instability of a life reliant on tips without guaranteed access to healthcare, paid leave, and other benefits, real change could be on the horizon.

The Hope

It has been one year since the start of the pandemic, and the cry of the overworked and underinsured is once again becoming just a murmur. An increase in vaccine availability quiets much of the fear of going back to a job where contracting Covid remains a danger, but bar and restaurant workers are still far from safe. Returning to work during a national emergency can be confusing, adding new ways for management to exploit staff such as through unsafe Covid practices, unexplained pay changes, and denial of federally required paid sick leave. After so much loss and disruption, mental health is suffering, and affordable insurance is often still tied to employment. One look at the long list of resources put together by the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, a nonprofit created by and for restaurant workers, gives some insight into just how vastly workers’ lives have been and continue to be affected.

With the passing of President Biden’s latest Covid relief package, small restaurants received access to $28.6 billion in grants, but a $15 federal minimum wage amendment failed. “I think people kind of started to talk about [issues for restaurants],” observes Watanabe, “but it was just like ‘bailout bailout bailout!’ But … that’s not going to cut it anymore.”

Last month, Barcito was able to get all of its employees vaccinated against Covid. As eligibility opens up to the rest of the public, a new normalcy feels within reach. But the sense of urgency to repair broken systems within hospitality threatens to dwindle. “I feel like it has kind of started to fall to the wayside,” Borgen Abdallah says. “The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter, and I think it’s just important that we [have] those conversations and that that continues to feel really urgent.”

Anti-capitalist methods can actually work well within our capitalist society, even beyond championing workers’ rights through ensuring stable wages, paid time off, health care, or shared ownership opportunities. American bars and restaurants will need to look at sustainability and minimizing harm not just to people, but to the environment. Ambitious bar programs that are eliminating plastics — eco-friendly paper, metal, bamboo, and even hay straws have become standard — tackling water usage, and targeting waste by focusing on the creative use of what most might toss out have a real chance to lead the way as well.

“I’m hopeful, but I also am disappointed in the industry,” says Watanabe. “I feel like we’ve had a year where we could have addressed some really deep problematic systemic problems in this industry.” Businesses must look frankly once again at where they are lacking in response to the racism, sexism, and ableism that has pervaded hospitality since its early beginnings in this country. If capitalism benefits from white supremacy, then now is the time to challenge them both. “Ultimately, it’s not just about hospitality,” Watanabe says. “This is happening all over the place, and there’s a lot of reckonings happening. It’s really about changing the way we do business to be more conscious, to be more people-centered, to be more thoughtful.”

2020 may have broken us down with its harsh realities, shuttering more than 110,000 bars and restaurants nationwide, but as long as we can keep the momentum of learning and reimagining a better future for this industry — one where it values lives over profits — there is hope. “It’s been a tough year,” says Borgen Abdallah. “I think a lot of it could have been avoided had we done things differently, and I don’t think reverting back to the old way of doing things is the answer.”

The article Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/anti-capitalism-hospitality/

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johnboothus · 3 years

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Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry

Fair Wages

A Level Field

A High Road

The Hope

The article Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/anti-capitalism-hospitality/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/morals-over-margins-a-blueprint-for-a-more-equitable-hospitality-industry

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enetproperty-blog · 5 years

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Section 21 No Fault Notices and Evictions to be Banned

Section 21 no fault notices and evictions could be banned under Conservative plans for the private rented sector says David Lawrenson of www.LettingFocus.com. But the losers will be the more vulnerable and “risky” tenants who will find they are increasingly shut out of private renting. Section 21 No Fault Notices and Evictions to be Banned Oh crikey! What’s this? The Conservatives are going to get rid of Section 21 (so called “no fault evictions”), thus aping a Labour policy and copying what they already have been doing for a year or two in Jolly Scotland. And here is next PM hopeful (or one of them), James Brokenshire on the TV and radio to explain it all. He’ll be very pleased with himself as the story has got first or second billing on the main news. And why not, as it was all planned before the weekend. Journalists, including me had been briefed (or leaked to by other journalists) and most held their water (as instructed by the government) until Monday. So all were ready with the story. Suddenly the Tories are the private rented sector tenants’ friends, just in time for their votes at the next general election, which gets closer every day with every wrong turn on Brexit. Read the headline and it sure sounds like its more bad news for the private landlord, even though it is just a “consultation”. My brother is soon emailing to say, “Who needs Corbyn and the Marxists when the Tories will clobber private landlords (again) first!” But is it really that bad? On one of the TV channels, the presenter asks Mr. Brokenshire what will happen to people who are going away for a year, to work say. Surely, they will now just not let their property out, draining the sector of yet more stock – and leaving their homes empty. After all, would you risk it is the tenants had every right to stay until they fall off the perch? Section 21 No Fault Notices – Possible Exemptions But Mr. B is ready for this one. As well as some vague talk about possibly speeding up the processes via some sort of special housing court, he also implies there would be exemptions for situations like the expat one. So I got to wondering who would police such “get out clauses”. Mmm. Not the local authorities – they have more laws to use against landlords than you can shake a stick at, but usually don’t use them due to lack of resource. Even those town halls who have big cash coming in from selective licensing schemes don’t seem to do much with it, (with the exception of Newham), other than employ a bunch of people to collect the dough coming in from all the good landlords who have dutifully joined and paid their license fee (while the bad ones hide in the darkness safe in the knowledge that their tenants may have their own reasons for not grassing them up). (Think illegal immigrants / folks who lack confidence / the mentally ill… the list of trembling tenant types is very long!) So what will landlords response to this be? Well, some will see the taking away of Section 21 (no fault notices) as just one more piece of regulation – and another reason to get out of the sector, leading to a shortage of private rental accommodation. “Hooray”, say GenRent, “We can then buy the properties that the landlord sell – and the flood of stock will mean they will be cheaper too”. But that pre-supposes folks want to stay in one place (owning a home is not as flexible as renting) and if they do, that they can get a mortgage anyway. (“Help to Buy” or “Help to Make Persimmon Execs Rich” as I call it, won’t be there forever – and certainly not under the Corbynistas). Other landlords, will stay in the game – and likely find work arounds. Maybe they will all become expats (or pretend to) and seek that exemption. Section 21 No Fault Notices and Evictions – Vulnerable and More Risky Tenants Will be Left Out in the Cold But one thing is for sure, the more “risky” tenant may become less attractive to the average landlord. What do I mean by risky? I’m going to introduce an example, which is actually not that unusual, but it illustrates the point well. Imagine you are a private landlord. You don’t have a portfolio of properties, maybe you have just one or two, even three say. But you are not doing this full time. You are like the majority of landlords in the UK. Now imagine you have a choice of letting to two tenant types – and Section 21 has been abolished. Oh, and this is not a “Conservative Section 21” abolition with “get outs” with the opportunity to say you are going away for a year to work on an oil rig, so you can come back, dust off your overalls and hard hat and get your home back. No, Sir. This is a Corbyn one. This is Section 21 No Fault Notices with no “get out” clauses. In this version, the tenant gets to stay in your property for life, and life really means life, unless they don’t pay the rent for two months, which takes 5 to 6 months to go through the courts before you finally get your home back. The tenants can be as horrible as they like, annoy the neighbours, mess up the property, but as long as they just about pay the rent, they can stay in your property for life, even until after you are dead possibly! Now imagine two tenants turn up. One is an aspiring graduate couple. The other is a couple who have come from a council recovery programme from the Hostel Drug-New Life Restart programme. Of course, you’d like to help the couple on the recovery programme. Of course you would. If there still was a Section 21 No fault Notice option, you could always say, “Well, I gave it a try, but the annoyed neighbours ringing me up every night was just too much, so I gave them notice in the end”. But with no Section 21 No Fault Notice option, would you be as likely to take the risk? The tenants could be there for life, unless they are dumb enough to do something like not pay the rent for 2 months or run a cannabis farm at the property – and get caught. So, vulnerable people and other potentially risky tenants will certainly find it harder to get private rented accommodation. Maybe Polly Neate, the boss at Shelter has thought this through and has an answer. But I doubt it. Section 21 No Fault Notices and Evictions – Joe Halewood View Joe Halewood, who could no way be described as a private landlord lover, but is someone who does understand the private rented sector and housing generally, has written a great piece on this. If he can see that one of the key flaws in removing Section 21 is that, then why not the zealots at Shelter and Generation Rent? He wrote at his blog at wordpressSpeyjoe2, as follows: This doesn’t just affect general needs rented tenants but everyone who is in a homeless hostel or in a domestic violence refuge as the exit from these is mostly to the private rented sector. If hostels and refuges can’t move people on then they can’t move people into homeless hostels or domestic violence and abuse refuges! Yet today we see Polly Neate the chief executive of Shelter and previously chief executive of Women’s Aid lauding the proposed removal of the no fault eviction on mainstream TV, radio and across social media when the policy will see more homeless on the streets and more women having to suffer domestic violence and abuse because there is nowhere they can flee to that is available! Today we also see the rump of the social rented sector lauding this proposal too as good news. Let’s hope every housing association stops using ‘starter tenancies’ with immediate effect as these too can be ended by a no-fault eviction as they are the same AST tenure as used across the private rented sector and last year official figures show 83% of new housing association tenancies were these no-fault eviction starter tenancies. Joe Halewood Section 21 No Fault Notices and Evictions Ban – Data Shows it is Not Needed Government data shows that on average tenants live in their rental properties for over four years and that in 90 per cent of cases tenancies are ended by the tenant rather than the landlord. Their data also shows that it takes over five months from a private landlord applying to the courts for a property to be repossessed to it actually happening. Research by Manchester Metropolitan University for the Residential Landlords Association (RLA) has found that in a large majority of cases where tenants are asked to leave their properties under Section 21 notices, there is a clear reason. Half of the notices are used where tenants have rent arrears, are committing anti-social behaviour or damage to the property. Other common reasons include the landlord needing to take back possession of a property for sale or refurbishment. The report’s authors argue that this “raises questions” about whether the use of Section 21 notices can properly be described as ‘no fault’ evictions, as some have called them. Sources: (Thanks to the Residential Landlords Association for these) The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Residential Market Survey for March 2019 can be accessed at: https://www.rics.org/globalassets/rics-website/media/knowledge/research/market-surveys/uk-residential-market-survey-march-2019-rics.pdf. It warns that: “In the lettings market, tenant demand continued to rise for a third successive month (non-seasonally adjusted data) while landlord instructions slipped further. On the back of this, contributors are pencilling in rental growth of approximately 2% over the coming twelve months. At the five year horizon, the imbalance between supply and demand is expected to lead to an acceleration in rental growth, which is seen averaging around 3%, per annum, through to 2024.” In Q4 2018 the mean average time it took for a private landlord to make a claim to the courts for a property to be repossessed as it actually happening was 22.8 weeks. See table 6a at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/778386/Mortgage_and_Landlord_Possession_Statistics_Oct-Dec_18_Annex.pdf. Manchester Metropolitan University’s report, Homelessness and the Private Rented Sector, can be accessed at: https://research.rla.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/MMU-Homelessness-and-the-private-rented-sector.pdf. Page 28 notes: “our research raises questions around whether S.21 terminations can be described as ‘no fault’ evictions.” The English Housing Survey Headline Report for 2017-18 can be accessed at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/774820/2017-18_EHS_Headline_Report.pdf. Page 18 notes that in 2017/18, private sector tenants had been living in their current properties for 4.1 years. The English Housing Survey 2016-017 report for the private rented sector found that 10.1% of tenants left a private rented property over the previous three years because their landlord asked them to leave/gave notice. See annex able 3.3 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/723885/Private_Rented_Sector_Chapter_3_Figures_and_Annex_tables.xlsx ABOUT LETTINGFOCUS Services for Private Landlords We help landlords and property investors by showing them how to make money in the private rented sector using ways which are fair to tenants and which involve minimal risk. Our advice is completely independent. We take don’t commission payments or fees from anyone, ever. Services to Businesses and the Public Sector We advise a range of organisations too to help them develop and improve their services and products for private landlords. David Lawrenson, founder of LettingFocus, also writes for property portals, speaks at property events and is regularly quoted by the media. 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https://www.lettingfocus.com/blogs/2019/04/section-21-no-fault-notices-and-evictions-to-be-banned/

#General #No Fault Eviction #Section 21 Notice #No fault evictions #No Fault Possession

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potr1774com · 6 years

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A lot of these high schoolers, liberal arts college grads, unmarried, childless, government dependent, emostionalistic voters fail to get and in many ways can not understand is WHY gun owners refuse to just ‘give up’ their guns. Most of them can’t figure out why anyone wants to or needs to own a gun in the first place. I a country that pampers them and has provided for all their needs its is hard to imagine why. When their worst day is a first world problem and the feeling of being poor amounts to not having enough to buy your fave venti latte from Starbucks. Godforbid they had to eat Ramon noodles in college, oh the inhumanity. Getting off topic. So to spell it out for all the brainwashed, ignorant and self righteous gun controlers/grabbers: This is WHY AMERICANS have guns.

FREEDOM. Our inalienable right to defend ourselves. We are FREE to use the proper tool that exerts the proper force equal to the force that can be used against us and subdue the attacker. We are FREE to do that and we should be. Benjamin Franklin said it well: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

CRIME. The streets of Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, and all those regions of the country where gun control has essentially disarmed anyone from being able to defend themselves. Thus, criminals and all those willing to break the law, know this. Hence, the immense crime rate in areas where people are most defenseless. Tomas Jefferson hit it spot on when he stated: “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776

FAMILY. The lives of my spouse and children are vastly more important than my own, and ensuring their security and defense is an inherent duty. It is OUR duty to defend and subdue all violent attacks on our family. George Washington stated: “That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use arms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion.” -George Washington, letter to George Mason April 5th 1769

THE HEART OF HUMANITY. We recognize the truth that this world is not perfect, and evil exists. Humans do evil things against each other. Thieves, robbers, assaulters, addicts, and people with uncontrollable personal issues that compels them to engage in actions that hurt, harm, ruin, and kill other people they come in contact with. THIS is unstoppable and has been a part of human society since the first humans walked the earth. Due to this inherent nature, a self defense that is equal or greater to subdue the evil is also recognized as necessary. The greatest being to ever walk the earth, Jesus Christ, stated this: “And He said to them, “But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one.” – Jesus, Luke 22:36. Why would Jesus of all people tell his followers to arm themselves and buy a weapon? Jesus then states: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries…” Jesus, Mark 7:21. God, spoke through The Apostle Paul when he stated: “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” – Paul, Romans 3:10-12.

There is another reason that is at the core of why The Founding Fathers of the most powerful and greatest nation on earth included the 2nd Amendment. This is not really taught in schools and people or view the government as mommy and daddy will obviously disagree. Which is also the result of growing up in a such a spoiled and pampered luxurious society.

“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

George Washington put it best when he stated: “A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.” Now lets look at a section of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” The Declaration of Independence, In Congress, July 4, 1776. Not only is it the duty and responsibility of the people to secure these inalienable rights but it is ALSO a right to alter, abolish, and institute a new government “whenever any form of government becomes destructive” to these rights. Ready for the primary reason for the 2nd Amendment?

FREEDOM TO DEFEND AGAINST ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT THAT ATTACKS OUR INALIENABLE RIGHTS.

Now considering THE HUMAN HEART (reason #4), and the government is made up of imperfect people who seek to draft imperfect laws AND in light of human history of governments; only an ignorant child would not see that an oppressive enslaving genocidal government is always a possibility.

Keeping and barring arms is no different than you locking your car doors and home door at night. When you do it, you do not see an immediate threat. No robber is standing in your front yard holding a sign saying “I will rob your house tonight”. You do it because the THREAT is a real possibility. You lock your car doors while you are at the movies because the THREAT of your car being broken into is a real threat.

An oppressive and tyrannical government is a real threat. Just look around the world now and study history. The Syrian government is gassing its own people. North Korea is starving its own citizens. China is imprisoning its own citizens for speaking freely. Wasn’t that long ago, the Taliban in Afghanistan were publicly executing who ever disagreed with them. All major genocidal governments in history, started with gun control and sought to disarm any resistance. This is the truth. These are real possibilities because of the human heart shown to us in real history.

If you notice, in every and all reasons for having a gun is this: BEST DEFENSE FOR WHAT IS MOST VALUABLE.

The use of guns for self defense have saved more lives than any safe space or gun free zone. All the mass shooters who were stopped by someone else with a gun, saved the number of lives as to the rounds left in the shooters gun. The shooter, instead of using all his ammunition on unarmed people, was stopped before he could use all his ammunition. A buried CDC report estimated that guns were used in self defense about 2.4 million times. Those 2.4 million people would have been just another victim of a crime if it was not for their ability to defend themselves. Deterrence also plays a factor.

Lets consider Court houses. What deters people from wanting to shoot up a court house? Video surveillance, silent alarms, armed security, metal detectors, entrance searches, and police response time to name a few. People are being sentenced to life in prison, receiving the death penalty, and being imposed life altering fines. Why aren’t the accused, their family, or the victims families shooting up court houses? Why is this such a rare occurrence all the while being a higher stress environment than high schools? The ability to defend against such attempts. That’s why.

The explicit observable ability to defend against an attacker is the deterrent. though, there is no full proof 100% deterrent or perfect defense. Some people are just crazy, illogical, irrational, and will just dive right into a pool with sharks after cutting their wrist. But those who are willing to violate the law BUT not risk their life, are more deterred. Shame the government of schools, counties, school districts, states, and federal aren’t willing to put systems in place to defend our children in schools like they do court houses, their political offices, and places where they store their money… But that’s another matter.

In the home and in public, gun owners are equipped to protect their spouses and children and ready to put down any attacker long before the attacker uses all his ammo on unarmed people and long before police finally arrive.

Gun Control advocates and gun grabbers either don’t understand the duty to defend their family or feel subconsciously guilty for failing or being unable to defend their family. Maybe even feel too selfish and lazy to defend their family so they would rather the government do it for them… either way, when the government starts taking away more of their rights and silencing their annoying voice… what will they have to defend themselves with?

Keep in mind, it was estimated that only 15% of the colonialist participated in The Revolutionary War… YOUR WELCOME 85% for your rights that which were secured by the 15% of gun owners willing to take a stand.

Why Most Gun Control Advocates Don’t Get It? They don’t have that great sense of anything besides themselves and their ideals to physically defend. They ‘defend’ only those who agree with their ideals and agenda, thus, still about them. They ‘fight’ for only those who agree with their ideals and agenda, thus, still about them. They are not willing to sacrifice themselves for someone else’s ideals. They aren’t willing to selflessly accept the notion that freedom includes risk. They fail to see their own self-righteousness. They fail to see their own logical contradictions and hypocrisies because they are too blinded by their obsession with pushing their own ideals and agendas. Gun Control advocates who don’t have children, do not have that innate parental instinct to protect their children at all costs, beyond themselves. Spoiled college grads not have experienced a world without their luxuries. Government dependent citizens, pampered by this system have no idea the depths a government can do.

Gun Control advocates need to spend 3 years in Syria; organize and participate in free speech rallies in North Korea; fight for womans and same sex rights in Iran; walk around the streets of Chicago and Detroit with their Gucci purse holding a sign that says “I am unarmed”; Then talk about not having the right and ability to defend yourself. They can even start now. Stop locking your home and car doors…