"Open your windies and put your heat full on"
Remember the old Hutchie E, in the Gorbals. The above was the advice from the experts, when folk complained about the damp on the walls, right from when it was first occupied. But, what happened before the tenants even moved in?
Phil McPhee remembers " When we examine what happened next it is not surprising many people including myself suspected that certain underhand practices might have been involved. The contract to build Hutchie E was given to a firm called Gilbert Ash, an offshoot of the multinational Bovis Group. Gilbert Ash held a virtual monopoly of the renovation contracts which were being undertaken in Glasgow during the seventies.
The site of Hutchie E was situated above old mine shafts which had been flooded for years. Disaster followed disaster during the construction. After work was halted by flooding (sometimes up to two feet of water on site). When the complex was completed and the decorators moved in they were faced with walls running with water and doors lying off straight lines and moss growing inside the buildings. A painter who worked on the job told me that as he put the wallpaper on it just fell off.
Scandalously, the public were not made aware of these problems. The fact that shifts of men worked overnight on the eve of the opening ceremony by the Queen to make ready the flat which she was to inspect. This was because all the wallpaper had fallen off the walls, which left the contractors panic-stricken."
I attended a recent Housing Conference at which one of the speakers, architect and housing expert Dr Stirling Howieson, conducted a presentation titled "How our homes are making us ill" in which he described how a mix of modern building materials, dust mites, lack of air exchange and general bad building practice, are making our homes unhealthy places to be. Like Hutchie E, these facts are well known to builders and council building departments, before buildings are are planned or designed.
Why isn't warm economic council homes part of the "new Renaissance" council leader Purcell is always banging on about. Why doesn't the City council just say. Our promise and aim is. By the year x every council home in glasgow will be insulated to a standard that will stop the drain of earnings on tenants heating bills, improve the health of children and alleviate some of the winter fear and misery of our older folk? It's like a human right the need to be warm at least. Won't happen, the new Renaissance like the first one and everyone since, were always in the control of the few for the benefit the few. not for the benefit of all.
The council are right on track with what they are trying to achieve. Like our history teachers at school, who held up both the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, as two of the greatest achievements of [man] and fail to emphasise the cost in human misery to ordinary people that these "great achievements" cost.
The
Medici the Godfathers of the Renaissance
"They clawed their way to the top, sometimes through bribery, corruption and violence. Those who stood in their way could end up humiliated - or dead. And the Medici exploited a network of "friends of friends" - hangers on who would do anything to stay close to the family." (Even the website this quote was taken from had to edit its content to avoid offending.
"Some visitors felt this content was offensive to Italians and Italian-Americans."). Sounds familiar?
Clearances for the new Renaissance
Today, the same Hutchie E advice is still being given out "Open your windows and put your heat full on" Well it's not the same words, but it means the same thing, whatever is said - Stay in poverty. If the council want tenants out of their homes, the property will be condemned as unfit for human habitation. (no matter what state it's in) If the land your home occupies is not prime (yet) for business takeover - you will be left in the squalor, the broken lifts, the anti social behaviour, your damp walls - till such times as it is.
Self help banned
And you won't be encouraged to be creative in solving your own heat retaining problems as folk in Brigeton are finding out. Your not allowed to make improvements to your home, you sit around in the cold waiting for the GHA doing it.
"100 residents told to ripe out porches or face court" http://tinyurl.com/3cssho
Promises
Our city council are always boasting that all these wonderful commercial developments will bring a benefit to ordinary people. As our then, council leader Charles Gordon, did in 1999, when our riverside was given up to luxury flat development, he puffed up the benefit to the city of the "unidentified occupants" Meaning he didn't even know who these places were being built for? " He said their council tax payments would be used to tackle social exclusion and added : "this is going to be a win-win situation for the whole city.we are talking about mega stuff." I wonder if when he talked about social exclusion, he meant how to maintain social exclusion.
Since Hutchie E, and before the public have been listening to the same empty promises. There is hardly a family living in a council house in the whole of glasgow who would not see a incredible benefit to their family lives if they lived in well insulated, warm and cheap to heat houses. Not only would it make folk happier it would also save vast sums in health care and go some ways to give credibility to the Kyoto Protocol of which the council have signed up to, or are in agreement with. The problem is always the same Glasgow City Council are firmly on the side of predatory business, who are happy to profit from the following "pouring money into the sky". The other thing that doesn't change, is if folk don't start to talk to each other and organise to do something about the present Medici, the status quo will maintain itself endlessly. (no mater who gets in at the next election.)
Why isn't the Council boasting and showing the lead with this kind of thing:
"The test houses insulated in Easterhouse, Glasgow, for instance, now have an annual space heating bill of about £40... "
dti.
http://tinyurl.com/27owrc
"d) Energy conservation"
"As well as looking for better ways to make energy, it can help some problems if you conserve what you have. For example, on a housing complex called Easterhouse, residents reckoned their flats were wasting energy but were still so cold and damp that their health suffered. When they first moved into their houses it was quite a shock. Families were forced to use the most expensive heating like electric fires. But they could only use it for a couple of hours at night to heat up the bedroom, before the children went to bed. Most families were absolutely horrified that they were paying up to a third of their income on fuel bills. And it was estimated in this community alone families were paying ten million pounds a year heating the sky above Easterhouse.
So the tenants got together with engineers and architects, to redesign the flats. They came up with insulation and solar heating. When they started talking about how they wanted these solar houses, people laughed and said 'Solar housing in the West of Scotland, are you crazy?'
But solar panels trap daylight, even on dull days, and can warm the air going into stairwells. Now the flats lose less heat. Before when families heated their flat and they opened their front door, they lost that heat because of the draft. Each open balcony or verandah was glassed in to trap even more light and heat, just like a greenhouse. And at the back of each flat, they built a new utility room to help with the damp. People can do their washing in that area so that it reduces the condensation inside the flat. Also it makes the flat a lot bigger and gives people a lot more space. However, there was only money for thirty-six flats in the pilot project, and no more have been converted.The rest of the estate is still pouring money into the sky. "
channel4 http://tinyurl.com/2zje3g
Look at the facts folks. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out no one is working for your benefit. The interesting thing is. You are in the majority. But then, nothings ever changes just because we know it's wrong.
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