Author Archives: Dominic Curran

Dominic Curran

Opinion: Are there no workhouses? Our skewed housing benefit debate

By Dominic Curran | Sun 31st October 2010 - 12:53 pm

This recent debate about housing benefit has been explosive, with anger and froth expelled by both sides of the debate. And with Christmas coming, I can’t help feeling that there are many out there whose approach to housing the poor is somewhat Scrooge-like. ‘Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?’ they are almost asking.

Housing benefit reform is a tricky beast, no doubt, as the most outrageous (but numerically few) examples of, say, unemployed immigrants getting £1,000 a week to live in Notting Hill have riled many, myself included. But it’s worth asking the question why are so many …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 62 Comments
Dominic Curran

Opinion: Council Housing – our role in its downfall

By Dominic Curran | Wed 20th October 2010 - 12:17 pm

Housing is not an issue of Conservatism or Socialism. It is an issue of Humanity

The Conservative Minister for Housing said that. In the 1950s. His name was Harold Macmillan, and he oversaw more than 300,000 homes built every year of that decade, two thirds of which were council homes.

Those words were spoken in a time when there was a consensus that the state should step in where there had been a market failure, and to ensure that everybody who wanted a decent home could afford one. Fast forward fifty years and what has happened that concrete and brick foundation …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 54 Comments
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