Category Archives: housing

No good deed goes unpunished: Hackney 1968

Posted on August 15, 2019 by odeboyz

One of my most horrifying experiences came about when I was called out to a routine job. I was told to replace a cast iron rain water pipe, at Lea View House in the Clapton area of Hackney. I pulled … Continue reading →

Posted in Autobiography, Health, housing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A start a middle and an end

Posted on July 17, 2019 by odeboyz

I’ll start this story in a tenants association hall in Myrtle Road, Harold Hill. I used the small bar for a pint or two in the 1980s when I heard that the chair had decided to resign. I put my … Continue reading →

Posted in Autobiography, Economics, History, housing, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The victims of Austerity are children

Posted on July 4, 2019 by odeboyz

Last week (end-June 2019) I tuned into radio 4 at 7am. I wasn’t paying too much attention, until I heard the report of a boy in school who’d fainted in school, when he got there on Monday morning. It transpired … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, housing, Politics, tenants rights | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Not everyone is middle-class with assets

Posted on June 20, 2019 by odeboyz

Rachel and Jack1 are in their late thirties, with two young children. Both are immature but have worked hard on their relationship. Jack’s a self-employed window cleaner, odd job man, labourer and gardener. He’s hardly ever in steady full time … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Health, housing, local politics, Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A Beautiful New Council Development

Posted on March 17, 2019 by odeboyz

A new build housing development Who, could deny, the need But, as in these multi-pound deals Might there be, an element of greed? Cram it dense, build it high Blot the landscape, the rich will buy But first, destroy the … Continue reading →

Posted in housing, local politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The defeat of cholera

Posted on December 13, 2018 by odeboyz

New epidemic diseases are always terrifying.1 Cholera arrived in Britain in 1832 when Britain didn’t have a medical-scientific infrastructure to cope. Favoured explanations for cholera were Miasma, (roughly, ‘bad air’), moral turpitude and God’s anger. Victorian Britain’s rationalists looked for … Continue reading →

Posted in Health, housing, Politics, statistics, Technology | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Housing upgrades, repairs and creative tension

Posted on July 12, 2018 by odeboyz

In the winter of 1969, I and five other tradesmen were directed to work in a derelict house in Rushmore Road Hackney. Two stories high it had two bedrooms, a large living room and a  brick back edition. There was … Continue reading →

Posted in Autobiography, housing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Yobbish behaviour

Posted on June 7, 2018 by odeboyz

Living on a council estate in the east end of London, we are quite used to seeing wrong doing. It is fair to say, the police know this estate well. They know some of our residents very well. One or … Continue reading →

Posted in Autobiography, housing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The 2018 local elections in Kensington and Chelsea*

Posted on June 1, 2018 by odeboyz

Mohammed Tehrani said, “Grenfell hasn’t had an impact in the south of the borough. In the south they don’t give a damn about Grenfell.1” The 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy killed 72 people in the richest borough in the richest city … Continue reading →

Posted in housing, local politics, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Chance Encounter

Posted on May 25, 2018 by odeboyz

I met this old man in Dagnam Park in the London Borough of Havering in the winter of about 1973. He had an old push chair, for transporting his logs, a bow saw to separate them into reasonable sized chunks … Continue reading →

Posted in Autobiography, History, housing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment