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Build homes now, but who will occupy them?
• ISLINGTON'S electorate deserves an explanation for the revelations about the property acquisition by the husband of our local MP (The MP, the judge and the auction, August 31).
It can’t have escaped many people’s notice that Emily Thornberry is usually only too willing to turn up for the opening of a can of baked beans if a story in your newspaper is in the offing.
And yet on this occasion, when asked to account for the £572,000 spent by her husband in buying a house in Rawstorne Street, Finsbury, your reporter self evidently experienced great difficulty in contacting her, let alone getting her to answer his questions.
By my reckoning, her hubby is coughing up £37,180 annually, or £715 a week, in interest alone – assuming a 6.5 per cent rate – paying for the property.
Hardly “cheap and cheerful accommodation”, as Ms Thornberry would have it, and unlikely to be within the financial range of the two Labour Party apparatchiks who it emerged from the article have taken up residence.
The article puts a wholly different interpretation on the photograph carried of our MP with her party colleagues camped outside the Town Hall with the banner “Build homes now”. Would the issue be of political or personal interest?
Michael Read
Milner Square, N1
q I attended the property auction at the Café Royal in Piccadilly. I too looked at the three properties for sale in Rawstorne Street with a view to buying one with my brother, as we both rent and this would be a way of owning our own place.
The initial valuation by the auctioneers was approximately £380,000 and our budget was within this and a bit higher.
However, two of the houses went for more than £600,000 each, sold to the same buyer, and the other I was surprised to read was sold to Emily Thornberry’s husband, who already has a house in Barnsbury.
Why then did they need another house? They have obviously bought this property to rent. Why else would you need a second house down the road from where you live?
In the meantime they have taken a house off the property market and added to the increase in property prices in this area.
Is this the way an MP and her husband should behave, considering the lack of affordable homes in Islington. They obviously think so.
LINDSAY JONES
St Philip’s Way, N1
• I AM always glad to see the council’s housing policies discussed in the Tribune. Yet in last week’s paper, Lib Dem councillor Terry Stacy seems to have leapt at the chance of a distraction from the usual stories about his administration’s failure to deal with the housing crisis by playing political football.
Cllr Stacy should be careful he does not score an own goal. Let us not forget that, although Cllr Stacy is a housing association tenant in Islington, he also owns a former council home in Tower Hamlets. This does not bother me personally, but it does make his attacks smell rather of hypocrisy.
What does bother me is the failure of the Lib Dems in Islington to get more affordable homes built. MP Emily Thornberry is doing sterling work persuading the government, and forcing the council, to build more homes. That is what really matters to people in Islington. Cllr Stacy should leave the personal politics at home.
KENNY HENDERSON
Upper Street, N1
• LABOUR and their cronies really have hit rock bottom in trying to defend the hypocrisy of the Labour MP for Islington South.
Attacking me personally is pathetic. Yes, I am a housing association tenant. I have lived in social housing all my life. I have always been upfront and proud of that fact. I have never been able to afford to buy the property I live in.
In the case of “owning” another property, I would like to set the record straight. My father, who is in his late 60s, was diagnosed with a disabling disease. I took on his responsibilities, including his housing and the financial obligation that this involves, to ensure he would not be forced to move out of the family home. That has been his home for decades.
Like a lot of people, I take the care of my family and the responsibilities that children have to their parents seriously.
I have done nothing that any other son or daughter would not do. It’s a shame that Labour and their cronies turn to cheap personal attacks on me and my father for doing so.
CLLR TERRY STACY
Joint Lib Dem deputy leader
• WHAT wonderful news. At last, a politician who puts her money where her mouth is.
Purchasing an Islington property to provide affordable accommodation for our sadly neglected younger generation and at affordable prices.
If this accommodation had not been made available we would have lost the unique talents of Councillor James Murray to another borough.
James is worth his weight in gold and has provided the residents of our borough with outstanding commitment and care.
He is part of a splendid new team of Labour councillors that have brought hope to Islington where none has existed before.
Shame on you, Lib Dems, for trying to turn this genuine act of supreme generosity into a political football. I say well done, Emily and family. We salute you.
RICHARD A BEST
Claremont Square, N1
• MY daughter, along with many other local people, is waiting on a never-ending list to be rehoused into a two-bedroom flat.
Imagine my surprise when I saw a housing association property offered for private rental in the Evening Standard for £400 a week.
When I rang the agency I was told that Circle 33 had advised it to manage the property as a market rental property.
If this is the case, what chance have children who come from this area of being allocated adequate accommodation locally and is the government aware of this policy?
If so, how does this equate with the affordable homes policy?
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
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