Outrage at eviction company advert calling tenants ‘household pests’ Housing rights campaigners have called for the removal of adverts on Facebook for an eviction company that has been accused of likening tenants to vermin.
The ads – which feature a piece of cheese and describe tenants as “pests” – are for a Midlands-based company called Remove a Tenant, which will evict people from properties across England and Wales and specialises in domestic repossessions. Offering packages costing from £50, the adverts ask: “Are your tenants household pests? If so we are sure we can help.” Seb Klier, campaigns manager at Generation Rent, the operating name of the National Private Tenants Organisation, said comparing tenants to vermin provided a shocking insight into the way renters are viewed by some landlords and agents.
Rats, roaches and overcrowding: the battle against slum landlords. Mohammad Ayaz’s sunken, red-ringed eyes tell a desperate story of night shifts, low pay and poor housing.
He hovers nervously outside the room he shares with his wife as police and housing officers check how many others are living in the small terraced house in east London. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” says Paul Oatt, a housing officer with Newham council. The Elvises of Porthcawl – Elvis impersonators in pictures. At last men are joining our conversation about toxic masculinity. Chris Hemmings used to be a lad.
He was, all in all, the sort of lad that I – and no doubt many other young women – would have avoided at university. We know the type well. Part of a rugby club that rejoiced in the objectification and humiliation of women, these lads would throw full pints in their female classmates’ faces, or choose them as victims for their game of “hot leg” (where you piss down a girl’s leg as she is dancing with you, holding on to her so she cannot move away, as your friends leer and hers, presumably, stand horrified and powerless). Hemmings never did “hot leg” himself but he did, he says, egg on others. When he looks back on those years, he is disgusted with himself.
William Giraldi on life as a bookish bodybuilder: 'It's a poisoned way to be a man' Seaside towns among most deprived communities in UK. Coastal communities are lagging behind inland areas, with some of the worst levels of economic and social deprivation in the UK, a report shows.
Comparison of earnings, employment, health and education data in local authority areas identified “pockets of significant deprivation” in seaside towns and a widening gap between coastal communities and the rest of the country. The government has pledged to give £40m to coastal areas in an attempt to boost employment and encourage tourism. However, researchers said some communities were being overlooked by policymakers, who were preoccupied with more affluent centres. Analysis by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank found that in 85% of Britain’s 98 coastal local authorities, people earned below the national average for 2016, with employees in seaside communities paid about £3,600 less.
The report commissioned by BBC Breakfast also found: How Not to Be a Boy by Robert Webb review – the gender conditioning of men. The actor and comedian Robert Webb is seven years old when the penny drops about boys and their feelings.
He is in his final year at infant school and is known for being quiet. Homeless man jailed for Hyde Park murder. A homeless man has been jailed for at least 26 years for murdering a “kind and peace-loving” carer in London’s Hyde Park after slipping through the hands of authorities at least six times in two years.
Hani Khalaf, 22, survived on the streets of Britain by stealing food and clothes after arriving in the back of a lorry posing as a Syrian asylum seeker, the Old Bailey heard. The Egyptian national was bailed for shoplifting hours before he kicked, punched and stamped 62-year-old Jairo Medina to death near Speakers’ Corner on the evening of 11 August last year. He pocketed Medina’s cash and stole his mobile phone, which he tried to sell on hours later. Show Me a Hero review – a symphonic mini-series from David Simon.
What is it?
Based on a true story about 1980s social housing in a New York suburb, this was David Simon’s next co-writing gig after Treme. 'We're past the tipping point': Boltonians respond to the market city's decline. This week Guardian Cities published an article by former Bolton resident Andy Walton – a deeply personal piece on the once-mighty northern city’s decline, and the gutting of its historical centre.
Almost one in four shops in the once-thriving market hub now stand vacant, with the decline of industry and the deterioration of the inner city blamed on poor decision-making and missed opportunities by local authorities. Humankind by Timothy Morton review – no more leftist defeatism, everything is connected. In 2015, Cecil the lion was shot with an arrow by a big-game hunting American called Walter Palmer.
Facebook and Twitter erupted in outrage against the insouciant dentist, UN resolutions were passed, Palmer was stalked and his extradition to face charges in Zimbabwe demanded. Thousands of Trump-shaped ecstasy tablets seized in Germany. Day of moaning declared in north of England over train woes. A day of moaning has been declared across the north of England, with public transport users encouraged to let rip about their terrible journeys.
Commuters are urged to write to their MPs and flood radio and TV phone-ins on Monday to express their frustration with the region’s poor transport provision. The event was called after the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, indicated his support for Crossrail 2, a £30bn train line across London, days after cancelling electrification projects to northern rail lines. It was a Conservative manifesto promise to electrify the lines, with Grayling’s predecessor, Patrick McLoughlin, saying in 2015 that “the electrification programme is central to our ambitious plans to transform the rail network across the country”. 'Northern powerhouse' £556m boost described as missed opportunity. Theresa May’s announcement of a £556m boost for the “northern powerhouse” has been described as a missed opportunity by business leaders amid warnings of an “increasing east-west divide” of government investment.
The prime minister announced a cash injection for a raft of projects, including a manufacturing park near the Nissan plant in Sunderland, aimed at creating thousands of jobs as part of the government’s post-Brexit industrial strategy. In her first regional cabinet meeting in the north-west of England, May singled out projects including the Goole intermodal terminal, aimed at linking the east Yorkshire town’s existing rail, sea, motorway and waterway hubs. The announcement of £556m spread across 11 local enterprise partnerships marks May’s first financial commitment to George Osborne’s scheme since she became prime minister last July. “In fact, Greater Manchester gets much more per head of population than anywhere else in [the] north. Safe by Ryan Gattis review – a Ghost story with a difference. Ryan Gattis’s 2015 novel, All Involved, featured 17 first-person narratives over a period of 144 hours during the 1992 LA riots.
His new book, Safe, again set among the drug ganglands of Los Angeles, similarly features a compressed timeline – 48 hours – but here Gattis pares the voices to just two narrators. Ricky “Ghost” Mendoza is a former addict and now safe-cracker for the DEA: “Ricky Mendoza, Junior, wasn’t my real name, just one I took as my legal back when it seemed smart to. The Preston Model. Inheriting a legacy of deindustrialization and faced with mounting socio-economic challenges, municipal officials in Preston in the UK – one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution – have been exploring new ways to create a more inclusive and democratic local economy as the foundation for systemic transformation.
They have been able to draw upon long-standing regional traditions dating back to the founding of the modern cooperative movement in nearby Rochdale in 1844, but have also looked to promising examples overseas – including the ‘Cleveland Model’ in Ohio – for inspiration. We are pleased to publish this article on their progress and ambitions. –The Next System Project When Labour took control of Preston City Council from a Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance in May 2011, it appeared a bittersweet victory.
Traditional city growth models, based on attracting inward investment for big infrastructure projects, could no longer be relied upon. Getting started. Bournville again: can a new Birmingham hospital recreate the Cadbury effect? Imagine a large employer moving its operations to a city and developing a plan – not just for the growth of the business, but also the long-term stewardship of its new neighbourhood. The history of the late 1800s is full of such employers, but the Cadbury family and their model village of Bournville, to the south of Birmingham, stands out. Visit Bournville today and remarkably little has changed since George and Richard Cadbury created the world’s first planned community.
The north remembers: how once-proud Bolton became 'a nothing of a town'