It is my firm belief that one of mankind’s primary instincts – once the animistic desires for food, shelter, affection and security are met – is to strive towards narrowing this gap between the observed and the imagined. The human species is unique in the known universe as being the sole genus for whom flexible thought, not arbitrary evolution, is the primary driving force determining the nature of our existence. The story of human civilisation itself is the story of ideas made real.

This is why political negativity, cynicism or attempts to preserve civilisation at a particular temporal point, no matter how elaborately deployed, are always overcome. In living memory the apex of this triumphal conceit came in 1992 when Francis Fukuyama proclaimed that with the established dominion of liberal democracy, history itself had ended. No-one alive between 1992 and today can possibly defend this premise. Such attempts at denying the ideas and idealism within is an alienation from our inherent desire to build and inhabit a better world – it is an alienation from our most basic nature as human beings.

History would teach us that every so often we enter periods when our strategies for coping with the gap between the world we inhabit and the world we aspire towards aren’t forthcoming – or the true scale of the gap, previously concealed, is revealed to us in a stark awakening. These periods tend to produce great conflict and great upheaval. Looking at our recent history, the post-war consensus was shattered in the late 1970s with the breakdown of traditional industrial relations. The free-market consensus that followed it is now itself breaking down as a consequence of the rampant over-speculation that is intrinsic to accumulative economic systems like ours.

In tandem with humanity’s ability to conceive of better and brighter existences than those it currently inhabits, we also have the (very useful) ability to envisage the opposite. The fearful spectre of dystopia is as much a part of the story of human civilisation as the desire to construct and improve. Recurring themes in our culture include the post-apocalyptic civilisation as a bi-product of immense human conflict (Book of Eli, The Omega Man), the conquest of earth by more advanced beings from elsewhere in the universe (Independence Day, Cloverfield, War of the Worlds) and the human race being attacked or enslaved when its latest invention or experiment turns against its creators (Terminator, Jurassic Park, Blade Runner, Frankenstein).

It is the last of these that I’d like to draw your attention to. The cultural expression of our fears regarding our own creations is usually expressed in a predictable demonisation of new and frightening technologies like cloning, genetic modification, computers, robotics or even electricity if you go back far enough in cinematic or literary history (the dark satanic mills…?). Quaint though these concerns often turn out to be in the long run, I cannot help but think that one creation in particular has been overlooked for the “creation turns on the creator” movie treatment because it has been hiding in plain sight for so long and come to dominate virtually every aspect of our existence.

Viewed from a particular historical perspective, it is possible to argue that we’ve been locked in a war for centuries (maybe millennia) for control of our own destiny as a species with one of our earliest and most enduring inventions – money. History would also suggest why this foe is so potent – because it is in many ways a mathematical mirror-image of ourselves in that it’s basic raison d’étre is to band together (accumulate) and gain the maximum level of control possible over its own destiny (dominate). This foe is, for want of a better expression, a slippery fucker that knows us better than we know ourselves and knows all our best moves.

How to win the war isn’t difficult to figure out – it’s simple divide and rule. The more equitably capital is divided between humans, the weaker it becomes. Capitalism, as an ideology (enemy propaganda!) that exists purely to perpetuate capital, exclusively advocates capital’s never-ending accumulation as a positive end in of itself – positive not for the capital (it never enters the fray as an active combatant on its own behalf), but positive for mankind. And there is little doubt that the most able and willing human agents of the enemy in this war are handsomely rewarded for their treasonous activities. It is however a very different existence for those of us fighting in the trenches for survival, regardless of which side we think we fight for.

But hold on a minute, lets not get carried away here. We may be able to win a war against money but what would happen after such a victory? Humans have a superb run of form when it comes to exterminating things, but I’m sure you are currently grappling with the puzzle of how society would work without some sort of currency underpinning it. The truth of the matter is… it can’t. We cannot function as a civilisation without some sort of mechanism for the transfer of abstract value between different parties (to give money its full name). Too many of our later social and economic inventions are dependent upon it.

After the second world war, the allied leaders realised they needed their former enemies to turn into trade partners for a prosperous future. Similarly, in the long run humans and money must learn to work together rather than compete as rivals for control of the planet. As a species, we undoubtedly have some kind of ultra-complicated love/hate/mindfuck relationship with money, but the only realistic prospect for a lasting peace between the flawed creators and the uppity creation is symbiosis.

The itch we can’t seem to scratch
Money, much like microscopic yeast, serves many fundamental purposes that are absolutely crucial to mankind. One yeast cell on its own is of minimal utility – all it can do is convert simple sugars into carbon dioxide and ethanol on a molecular level. Billions of yeast cells working in unison under the right conditions can produce enough carbon dioxide to make a loaf of bread rise in an oven. The same quantity of yeast under slightly different conditions can convert barley sugars into beer.

Bread and beer were the staple of the Roman Army. When the Romans scored a great military victory on some long-forgotten battlefield, in the strict physicalist sense they should have emblazoned their triumphal arches with the phrase “It woz the yeast wot won it”. In the same way, money and it’s intrinsic behaviours are equally responsible for a large number of human endeavours and accomplishments – some positive, some negative. We often think of episodes in human history like the recent Iraq war or the moon landings as the result of grand (and more often than not incorrect) decisions made by human leaders driven by human interests. However, the underlying financial motivations and contributions that underpin both these events – and countless others – are not hard to deduce.

When harnessing the abilities of yeast, every aspect of the environment in which the yeast is put to a productive purpose is precisely controlled by man. It’s man’s intervention, or lack of, that determines whether the end result of yeast’s presence is a fine ale or vaginal thrush. If we are to obtain similar positive social results as a product of utilising money’s intrinsic behaviours, we must begin to think of money in the same way we think of yeast – as a wild power requiring care and control to harness for purposes we agree are worthwhile. The non-interventionist “hands-off” stance we’ve taken towards the accumulation of capital in recent years has resulted in the economic equivalent of an embarrassing and expensive prescription for Canesten Duo.

For the baker, the task of harnessing the yeast’s abilities is simplified by the fact that the individual craftsman retains complete unity of command and control over the process at hand. The yeast is only “answerable” to the baker for it’s activity, and the baker is at complete liberty to discard any yeast samples or strains that he considers to be a poor performer at delivering the characteristics he desires in the finished loaf. An arbitrary, autocratic approach to management of money on a society-wide scale is not really an attractive prospect – so here I think I must part ways with this already overstretched analogy.

The late great Scottish trade unionist Jimmy Reid (of UCS lock-in fame) once remarked “Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision-making by the people for the people” – and he was right. He was also hinting indirectly at a much more profound principle, which in it’s simplest terms can be expressed thus;

If a society is to be considered truly democratic, all decisions that have a public impact beyond the individual must include the public in the decision making process on a democratic basis. While there is in every case a legitimate question of scope, the ability to participate in the decision-making process must not be based on entitlement via ownership – because that’s how man’s dominion over his fellow man is accomplished and re-enforced. The 8,000 year old war on money will only be won once we take this simple idea to heart as a species. Once we do, our ranks will be united as never before.

It’s down to us Jack
Once again we find ourselves having to re-examine the moral validity of a situation whereby one man, or small clique of men, may wield unquestioned executive power over their fellow humans on the basis of ownership. This sorry state of affairs has been the case throughout most, if not all, our recorded history. Not so long ago the same underlying concept underpinned the system of legal slavery that permitted one human to degrade another to the point where their very existence, not just their labour, was considered a trade-able commodity to be bought and sold on an open market.

We may feel very proud of the fact that our recent ancestors eradicated the legal instruments that permitted the direct ownership of one man by another, but if we allow the legal statutes that permit one man to exclusively own and control the very means and resources by which another man sustains himself, without any modicum of accountability or involvement by the dependent party in how those means and resources are deployed, how far have we really advanced? When the slaves were “freed” in the deep south, a great many just showed up for work the next day – the only difference being an expectation in law that the money once set aside by the slave owner to feed and clothe the slaves he owned was now used to pay the ex-slave’s wages. Everything must change in order for everything to stay the same.

In addition to addressing the fundamental question of ownership, we also need to revisit the idea of what is generally considered “public” in economics, and what is considered “private”. It cannot stand to reason that decisions can be made by a lone individual (or small group of individuals) which have a direct impact on a workforce of 10,000 people purely on the rationale that the shares they use to control the organisation are considered “private” property. For this reason, I include “private” companies within the public sphere as they depend on the effort of (and collaboration between) multiple individuals turned towards a common purpose.

Currently, the core purpose of self-enrichment for the owners is defined by the company’s private shareholders and implemented by proxy through a chief executive officer. By contrast, the economic decisions I consider to be in the “private” sphere are those currently considered to be matters of “personal finance” – i.e. those that affect the individual and their immediate family. The extreme corporate excesses and syphoning of the past decade have led us to the position whereby we feel that the question of “who earns what and why” is a legitimate matter of public debate – how each individual spends what they’ve earned as a result of their labouring is not.

The true issue here is how to make money accountable to something other than itself, or merely to human agents that act on its behalf. Succumbing to this reflex is to concede control of society’s economic destiny bit-by-bit to vested interests – and deliver it into the hands of the old foe. The disastrous experiments with centralised bureaucratic planning in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and elsewhere throughout the second half of the 20th century would suggest that making capital accountable only to a small group of individuals occupying the highest-ranking positions of state – regardless of whether they’re elected and regardless of the interests they claim to represent – is probably not a very good idea.

Vesting such large quantities of monetary power and control into the hands of such a small number of individuals simply opens the way for the rampant self-interest of those individuals to come to the fore. Both the nepotistic crony-ism of the old eastern bloc and the rampant slash-n-burn pocket-stuffing of global capitalism’s übermensch bare witness to this simple principle. The old maxim of absolute power corrupting absolutely remains as valid as when it was first coined. There is in practice no valid method by which responsible administration of an economy in the interests of the many can be undertaken by representatives of the people without the inevitability of vested interests eventually overwhelming the entire system. This is a job for every last man jack of us, and we shirk it at our peril.

Growth
Economic growth has stalled – politicians claim that everything will be OK in a few years once it starts again. They are lying. The reason growth remains in limbo, bouncing a few decimal places around zero percent is because of one simple economic truth that underpins the entire financial predicament of the western world and the people that inhabit it – the ability of the capital to absorb and accumulate newly-created economic wealth now outstrips the ability of the real economy to produce it.

Even if by some economic miracle growth were to return at the lauded rate of 3% annually, all it represents is further speculation on the basis of absorbing yet more newly created wealth out of the real economy at some future point. Those labouring away to feed the financial machine’s insatiable appetite for return on investment stand to see only that proportion of it which is necessary to either keep them alive and able to work, or in the case of highly-skilled financial agents to prevent them jumping ship to further the interests of rival capital.

We face three choices: The first is an indefinite paralysis (zero growth) due to a lack of action or ideas. The second is renewed economic activity (and therefore growth) based on a newly-discovered mechanism of transferring even more capital from the poor to the wealthy, resulting in a kind of credit-serfdom. It is possible to make a compelling case that we’re already a long way down this road. The third and final option is a gradual reversal of the skewed distribution of wealth within society, or rather a “recapitalising” of the public based on the shared ownership of economic output – instead of the minority pocketing the profits of the majority’s labour for themselves and further skewing the distribution of wealth in their favour.

Even if we were to accomplish economic growth by one of these methods, growth alone doesn’t really solve very much – it just measures the sum total size of the economy and provides no information as to what is happening within it. It makes no mention of how the nation’s economic output is being distributed, and whether that distribution looks healthy, unhealthy or downright dangerous. The Gini Coefficient, a measure of income distribution within a nation, must become as important a measure of our society’s economic well-being as the arbitrary productivity statistics.

How to get out of the mire
I propose the following measures as a means of dragging ourselves out of the hitherto described mess we find ourselves in.

1. Introduce “Public Trusts”
Create new type of legal entity, the “Public Trust”. This new type of organisation will be specifically designed to ensure that employees retain overall executive control of their workplaces, and that executive authority within each workplace is established by a democratic mandate from the workforce. Public trusts should also be legally compelled to behave in the public interest, and will be accountable to a sovereign body (the “Public Congress”) comprised of democratically elected representatives chosen by all employees of public trusts nationwide. The public congress will be responsible for mutual cooperation and coordination of public trusts in the economic interests of wider society. Legislation should also be introduced that gives employees of private and public limited companies the legal right to ballot the workforce in favour of conversion into a public trust. Conversion would involve the compulsory purchase by employees (as a group) of existing issued shares over time and compensation of the existing shareholders based on a standard valuation formula. Public trusts would also be required to ratify an internal constitution by simple majority of employees that spelt out how the organisation would be administered in the public interest and how it would ensure accountability to employees. Public trusts would technically reside in the public sector but would operate independently of the executive branch of government.

2. Full employment paired with life-long learning
A return to the policy of full employment, whereby the level of unemployment mirrors the number of job vacancies produced by the economy at any given moment, is vital to our economic recovery. The current economic orthodoxy maintains that there is an ideal unemployment rate whereby a small but significant proportion of the population must be made to endure the hellish realities of unemployment in order to provide a disincentive for those in work from “slacking”, thereby inviting unemployment. This crude manipulation technique contributed enormously to the union militancy of the 1970s and early 1980s which feared the loss of any jobs on this basis that the dire consequences were well known. In the days since the unions were smashed, we’ve largely learned to tolerate unacceptably high levels of unemployment by throwing more generous handouts to people out of work in some kind of sick gesture of repressed guilt. In truth, this persistent situation of unproductive scapegoating is part of the dead-weight that holds our society and economy back. It must stop. The only way to retreat from this bizarre position is to acknowledge the fundamental human need to obtain productive work, in tandem with the needs of a modern economy to constantly innovate. Promoting full employment in tandem with a guarantee that any individual no longer required by the economy because of technical obsolescence should be re-trained and put back into employment with the requisite skills to continue as a productive member of society and contributor to the nation’s economic output. This would require both additional education and work placement. No society can hope to remain an economic and technological front-runner in the 21st century if educational opportunities remain rationed or restricted on the basis of ability to pay. The general availability of free, quality educational courses for all ages must become an unquestionable cornerstone of our economic strength, and technological progress must no longer equate to a fear of obsolescence if we are to ensure that the economy satisfies the basic human need for work.

3. Public sector leading from the front
We must get used to the idea of the public sector as the employer, investor and innovator of last resort in our never-ending fight against unemployment, economic stagnation and technological retardation. Doing nothing or being resigned to the defeatist idea that all intervention will only make matters worse while economic collapse eats away at the very fabric of society are not an option.

The above measures would put us a good way down the road towards a genuinely inclusive, participatory society – the kind of society in which the innate abilities of each individual are not thwarted by the rationing of opportunity, prevalence of vested self-interests and perpetuation of rigid hierarchies. A society who’s chief character is developed and defined by the strength and merit of its citizens’ best ideas made reality through partnership and co-operation. These forces, once properly set in motion, are more potent than any crude attempt at deriving greater output for a privileged minority via greater intimidation of the disenfranchised majority.

There is a formal definition of Participism as a political and economic creed as defined by the work of Michael Albert, Robin Hahnel, Stephen Shalom and others. That is not what I am arguing for in this piece. It is too prescriptive and crystalline to be of any practical value to our current predicament. I am proposing something that – while inspired by many of the same impulses and sharing many of the same objectives – is far looser, more flexible and perhaps critically a lot simpler in its implementation.

• thirteen years of Labour rule
• 2008 bank meltdown
• Blair-Brown Downing Street Wars
• Gordon Brown’s self-immolation during the 2010 campaign

… the Tories still couldn’t win a miserable forty percent of the vote.

That stings. It places a black spot on Cameron’s leadership and typecasts him as the man who couldn’t even beat Gordon Brown.

It gave Nick Clegg – previously laughed at, or ignored, by all decent Tories – the keys to Downing Street.

So they want another go. ASAP.

The question, therefore, is simple, and is being asked privately over port and cigars in exquisite Queen Anne manor houses in Dorset, Wiltshire and Berkshire, and in swish flats in Kensington, Chelsea and Docklands: how to engineer an early election which the Tories will win?

The nightmare scenario, of course, is for the Tories to force a poll which Labour then goes on to win. Or gains sufficient seats to form a working coalition with the ever-promiscuous Liberals.

Imagine the gnashing of teeth! Imagine the grins on LibDem faces! Imagine how long Cameron would last after that!

Opinion polls suggest the British public likes coalition government. They’re bored by Punch and Judy politics. They voted for a mixed-bag administration and now expect it to work, diligently, to solve the nation’s problems.

They want the British economy defended, as far as possible, from the Euro-quagmire which starts at Calais. They want the bankers disciplined, rioters put in chokey, the NHS protected, and benefits cheats made to work in a burger bar.

It follows that if the Tories are seen to engineer, arrange, provoke, encourage, or otherwise facilitate, a fallout with the Liberals, leading to an early election, they (the Tories) risk being chastised at the ballot box. People will think:-

“You bastards. You put party advantage over the good of the nation, a nation facing profound economic and other problems. Typical selfish upper class Etonians. You’re not getting my vote. You posh gits.”

There are a number of ways the Tories could play it. One is to find a method, with hard-as-nails plausible deniability, to destabilise the Liberals to such an extent that they, the Liberals, destroy the coalition and provoke a general election. Senior Tories would then go on TV, wring their hands, tearfully regret the need for an early election, beat their chests and explain how they love the coalition more than their own mothers and, with maximum humility, regret, weasel words, and hypocrisy, go to the country. They might just get away with it.

I suspect the Daily Telegraph’s bugging of Vince Cable’s constituency office was the start of just such an operation, quickly aborted. You only have to read the Telegraph blogs to marvel at the Tory Head-Bangers permitted to infest that newspaper. They’re David Cameron’s unpurged Militant Tendency. They’re cocky, pleased with themselves, and up for a fight. Oh, and they don’t like Mr Cameron much.

Senior Liberals are, naturally, aware of the problem and there will be a degree of healthy paranoia. They, or their researchers, also read the Daily Telegraph. Their job is to anticipate the machinations of the Tory Head-Banging Dirty Tricks Department, neutralise them, and ensure that blame for an early election lands firmly on David Cameron’s Bullingdon topcoat.

It adds up to a fatal lack of gravitas, a boy sent to do a man’s job. Cameron, despite his obvious faults, comes over as a grown man: a big, beefy, shiny-faced, not-too-bright Flashman character, with Eton/Oxbridge/upper class self-confidence in spades, willing to take risks in pursuit of his interests and those of his banker friends.

Labour notoriously is less ruthless than the Tories when it comes to ditching useless leaders. Plus the Conservatives were prepared to try, and then discard, a series of rotten ones – Hague, Howard, Duncan Smith – until, almost by accident, they hit on Flashman.

So poor Ed – obviously a decent chap but hopelessly unsuited for the role – will hang on for a while. But when the knife does go in I hope Labour remembers what happened to Kinnock when he faced Thatcher across the dispatch box.

It is an iron law of politics that a male politician cannot be seriously rude to a female politician. But, crucially, the reverse is not true. As Kinnock discovered to his cost. So why not play the same trick on the Tories? Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

Cameron would be vulnerable to a female Labour leader. He has problems with women. He’s in the process of sacking hundreds of thousands of low paid, female, public sector workers. He sexually harassed mad little Nadine Dorries. He likes telling uppity women to ‘calm down.’

Two words: Yvette Cooper.

Another expensive gift from Blair to the British people: to defend the London Olympics from Islamic terror, provoked by Blair’s adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq (backed by British politicians from all political parties) the event must be militarised, with British troops and armed US citizens on British soil, pointing guns at families attending the Triple Jump.

But what d’you expect? If you invade other people’s countries, drop 500lb bombs on shepherds attending wedding parties, establish an international torture operation, and then tell lies about it, the friends and relatives of those killed, maimed, tortured and abused will tend to get upset.

There must, of course, be adequate security at the event, and the necessary guards employed and paid for. But don’t forget why the British taxpayer, during a period of deep economic crisis, must foot the bill: blow-back from Blair’s killing spree.

How about a quick one line Act through both Houses of Parliament, making it lawful to (a) send the bill the Blair and (b) seize his assets should he fail to pay? He made a lot of money from killing and maiming. Why should he keep it?

It was a simple case of supply meeting demand. The tabloids dug the dirt, millions paid to read it. If the tabloids were immoral then so were their readers. The tabloids were like playground bullies with a large gang of hangers-on. It made them virtually untouchable. Anyone who tried was liable to receive the tabloid treatment.

A few brave journalists, politicians and celebrities refused to be intimidated. But that’s another story.

That cosy, amoral, market relationship, underpinned by good old fashioned blackmail and political patronage, has now collapsed. The readers have decided that they are more moral than the tabloids.

To hack the ‘phones of politicians and celebrities was one thing. Unlawful, wrong, but who cares? Politicians and celebrities court publicity. If they then moan that their privacy has been invaded, so what? If they don’t like the heat, so the argument runs, they should get out of the kitchen.

But then a tabloid was caught hacking the ‘phone of a murdered schoolgirl. Voicemail messages were deleted, giving her parents false hope that she was still alive. A red line had been crossed, a scandal ensued.

The tabloids are now chastened and keeping their heads down. The main ‘phone hacking publication – Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World – has closed. Senior politicians, who were in bed with tabloid management, have grabbed their trousers and scarpered. Various inquiries, involving the great and the good, will examine the matter and issue Reports. A seemingly vigorous police inquiry is ongoing. Editors, journalists and, ideally, proprietors, may end up in jail.

But where does that leave Britain’s tabloid culture? The scandal will pass. The readers – millions of them prepared to spend their money on tabloid journalism – will remain. The politicians will continue to court those readers and seek to form relationships with tabloid editors and owners, better to lubricate the romance.

Can Britain’s liberal elite really instruct tabloid owners and their readers on what’s right and proper, and wrong and improper, for them to publish and read? Because that’s what it boils down to. Personally, I hope they – the liberal elite – have a damn good crack at it.

Some people loved the Roman Circus, bullfights, and public executions. But does that mean such events must and should occur? Would freedom of choice and freedom of the press suffer a terrible assault if British tabloid journalism is defanged?

Before 9/11 British Muslims were under the radar. They were seen as traditional, conservative, good family values, not much crime, drug abuse or teenage pregnancy among Muslim youth, small business people, good work ethic, Conservative voters.

But then Bush and Blair over-reacted to 9/11 and that changed. We’ve seen the rise of the EDL in Britain, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, anti-Muslim Tea Party activists opposed to the 9/11 ‘mosque’ in New York and, of course, Anders Breivik in Norway.

The internet is awash with nonsense about a European Caliphate, Muslim birth rates, the alleged incompatibility of Islam and democracy. British fascists have even climbed into bed with far-right Zionist groups to make common cause against Muslims.

It’s one of the great strategic achievements of Al-Qaeda (from their point of view). They bombed New York, Madrid and London and provoked exactly the political reaction they wanted in the West. Bush and Blair were stupid enough to play into their hands.

It’s early days but, so far, the Norwegians have played a much cleverer game. While Cameron in the UK demanded ‘more security’ in response to Breivik, the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, sought ‘more democracy.’

It’s so blindingly obvious that when fighting a group such as Al-Qaeda – authoritarian, anti-democratic, violent, irrational – the West must be liberal, democratic, peaceful and rational. In other words, the precise reverse of Al-Qaeda.

During the Vietnam war, US rednecks hated on ‘Gooks.’ In Britain during WW1 old ladies walking their dachshunds in public parks were abused by strangers for owning a German dog. During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Irishmen in London kept their heads down whenever an IRA bomb went off.

All of which is a further reason to bring the troops home soon from Afghanistan. Once British forces are no longer fighting, and dying, in a Muslim nation the poison will be drawn from the EDL.

All Western governments with minority Muslim populations need to think long and hard before deciding again to kill large numbers of Muslims abroad. They simply can’t get away with it without causing major problems at home. It’s one of the great advantages of multiculturalism.

A distasteful aspect of Rebekah Brooks’ testimony before the House of Commons select committee (19th July) was her repeated use of the word ‘story.’ Run a search on the transcript. She used the word again and again.

I listened to Ms Brooks talk about, among others, the Milly Dowler ‘story’ and thought ‘Whoa! That’s not a story. That’s real life. A young girl was murdered. Your reporters broke into her phone, deleted messages, and gave her parents false hope that she might still be alive. Harry Potter is a story. Milly Dowler is real.

Rebekah Brooks and her ‘stories’ need to be got in a witness box, under oath, for cross examination by someone trained and experienced in such matters. Tom Watson was great and it’s a relief that our elected politicians, after years of betraying us to Murdoch, have finally become normal politicians again, holding power to account, without fear or favour, on our behalf.

Enough of Rebekah Brooks’ ‘stories.’ We need the truth. The politicians’ job is to deliver it.

Twenty-two units of social housing in central Brixton, London were handed to yuppies today as police and bailiffs carried out a mass-eviction.

Clifton Mansions on Coldharbour Lane has been owned by Lambeth Council for decades. It’s a beautiful, gated, Victorian block, three minutes walk from a Zone 2 tube station. As such, it’s worth a lot of money. Property developers have been salivating over it for years, furious it’s not “luxury apartments” for yuppies.

Well, they got their wish at 8.30am today as van loads of bailiffs and police in body armour evicted residents. The block will be sold at auction.

More pics here