Someone sent me a concerned message on Twitter the other day. She was worried that things were getting me down. I’m afraid she’s right. It’s getting more and more difficult to stay chirpy, now that the news is so unrelentingly grisly. I try, because there’s no point drooping around feeling glum, but there are two bits of news that are currently making me want to bang my head against a wall: about the Masai in Tanzania, and the New Era Estate in Hoxton.
Same shit, different continent. The Masai are to be thrown out of their homeland by the end of the year so that the Dubai royal family can use it to hunt big game; residents of the New Era flats could be thrown out of their homes by Christmas so that their new American landlords can make big profits. This is what’s getting me down. Money rules everywhere. Absolutely.
Forty thousand Masai are to lose their homes and land, so that one staggeringly wealthy family, from another continent, can play there. Over here, 93 households will lose their homes, so that greedy fund manager Westbrook, from another continent, can speculate. How bored are these Dubai persons? Have they nothing to shoot in their own country? Hasn’t Westbrook wrecked enough tenants’ lives in the US?
How immoral can you get? As immoral as you like, by the look of things. The Tanzanian government seems not to give a toss, as long as the world doesn’t notice, and our weedy-wet government is unable, or unwilling, to protect us from wealthy predators. Poor foreigners may not take our little jobs, or make our sandwiches, but phenomenally rich ones may take our homes, our land and our utilities.
Tory MP Richard Benyon, ex-Westbrook partner, should be ashamed. He could have saved the New Era estate, by hanging on to it and keeping the rents low. Simple. He could afford it, a squillion times over.
“Don’t worry,” says Fielding. “Boris, a knight in shining armour, will save New Era, because it’s a vote winner. Nothing to do with principles. Have no illusions.” I haven’t any more.
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