“Your leaflet through my door… was a poor attempt”. It should have concentrated on the question of “secure tenure” he thought.

I sent a text back saying why not get involved? Tell us how you think we could improve what we are doing. Back came the message: “If you guys don’t know what ur doing (and it seems you don’t) the Council will run rings round you…”

He’s against transfer, what’s he trying to do, knock our confidence? Anyway the third text mused on the fact that many tenants wouldn’t vote. We apparently needed to find out whether or not those not voting would be counted as Yes votes.

You’re wondering what the fourth text message said, aren’t you? I can sense it.

“I did more than my fair share of voluntary work for tenants 20 years ago…I washed my hands of it after seeing corruption on BOTH sides.”

Still, he did wish us luck despite our patent inadequacies.

What happened with the next leaflet? Right on queue, his staccato text messages came rolling in.

“Just got your news sheet through the post. You’ve done it again – rabbiting on about KITCHENS when the real issue is about the fatal consequences of losing our ‘SECURE’ tenancies”.

I’m afraid that our material was so poor that by this stage the poor chap was apoplectic.

“…are you clowns undercover Council/HA agents?”

Once the initial anger had subsided the second text was a little more forgiving of us. We had to impress upon tenants the difference between ‘secure’ and ‘assured’ tenancies.

And the third text? We needed to consult a ‘friendly’ specialist on Tenancy Law.

And the fourth? We had to contact UNITE. Apparently they have sympathies towards social housing. They know the legal issues of tenancies. “Perhaps they can help?”

And the fifth? He was warming to the theme and had forgiven us our lack of knowledge. Once tenants “are made to truly understand what they will legally lose forever – you’ll win their votes for sure. “But you must move quick – time is short now!”

Alas, as agents of the Council sent to infiltrate and undermine the campaign against ‘transfer’ I’m afraid we were utter failures. The tenants voted 72% against selling off our homes.

For God sake mate why didn’t you just give us ring?

In the Swindon Advertiser Russell Holland “called the comparison a red herring, as tenants had been given the opportunity to avoid the debt altogether by voting for the transfer.”

So it’s our fault for voting No?

Mr Holland said there was no comparison because Birmingham would be demolishing a lot of houses. In fact, I have never said there was a comparison.  All I said was that if a Tory/Liberal coalition in Birmingham could press the coalition government to reduce their debt then why not Swindon. Surely it was worth a try?

Mr Holland told the Adver that the Council would write to the government “to see if there was any further room for manoeuvre and change things”. Yet a mere letter this late in the day is hardly likely to move them. The ruling group in Swindon are members of the same Party which leads the government. They should have been onto this months ago.

That notwithstanding it was worth asking our MP to press the Minister, even at this late stage. Hopefully he will be able to secure some further movement from the government. I will let people know what Rob Buckland reports back to us.

* Swindon Council tenants voted to reject transfer to a housing association by 6,073 to 2,329 on a turn-out of 65.6%.

“A chill wind has blown through the salaries of the UK housing sector’s head honchos. Inside Housing’s exclusive annual survey of chief executive salaries reveals that more than half the bosses of the largest 100 housing associations saw their total pay frozen solid, or shift by just 1 per cent.

The total remuneration of 44 chief executives – including basic salary, bonus and car allowance but not including employer pension contributions – was completely icebound, not budging at all between 2009/10 and 2010/11. A further 12 have experienced pay increases or decreases of a single percentage point. In total, 15 housing association heads have seen their remuneration fall.”

It must be tough for them. But before you cry in your beer read on.

This year’s chief executive salary survey by Inside Housing shows that 58 association bosses earned more than prime minister David Cameron’s £142,500 salary in 2010/11.

Inside Housing says that he average total chief executive salary has risen slightly by 1.8 per cent from £153,353 in 2009/10 to £156,141 in 2010/11.

I think most of them could just about get by with a pay freeze on money like this.

“For the second year running, Jane Ashcroft, chief executive of 34,982-home Anchor, is the highest earner. She received total payments of £331,250 – up 14 per cent on last year – made up of a basic salary of £275,000, a £15,000 car allowance and a £41,250 bonus.

Ms Ashcroft is the only chief executive to have broken the £300,000 mark, but David Cowans, chief executive of 62,034-home Places for People on £287,193; David Bennett, chief executive of 79,011-home Sanctuary Group, on £283,376; and Keith Exford, chief executive of 56,658-home Affinity Sutton, who earned £269,000 including a £33,000 bonus, are not far off.”

No wonder some of the senior officers in Swindon Council are so keen to flog off our houses to a Housing Association which some of them would TUPE over to. Be assured of one thing. When ‘transfers’ take place the wages of senior officers only go one way – upwards.

You can listen to it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ks9br

It will be available for 7 days.

Not only is the unemployment rate the worst for 17 years – 2.57 million – but there are signs that structural, rather than episodic unemployment is likely to blight the lives of young people and the women who are being thrown out of their public sector jobs, for many years to come.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the move to make people work beyond 65 will have a knock-on effect on young people who would have filled the vacancies down the job chain created by each retiring worker. Youth unemployment (16-24) now stands at 991,000 or 21.3% of the workforce. Not only do young people who have gone on to higher education find that they cannot get a job for which they are qualified, but now more than one in five of them are struggling to find any job.

Vacancy levels languish at 462,000 compared with the 2.57 million unemployed (5.56 people after each vacancy). Yet the situation is worse than these bare figures indicate because more than a million people have taken part-time work in the absence of being able to find a full-time job. Even the number of part-time jobs has fallen, to 7.78 million, down 175,000 from the three months to May 2011.

In addition there are 9,354,000 people (of working age, 16-64) economically inactive . Of these:

• 2,279,000 are students
• 2,321,000 “looking after family/home”
• 2,156,000 long-term sick
• 1,571,000 retired

Of this total 2,288,000 say they want a job, although do not qualify as unemployed because they have either not been looking for work in the last four weeks and/or they were unable to start work within 2 weeks. The majority of these people are women – 1,332,000.

The cuts in public sector jobs, many of them socially useful, such as in the NHS, and service providers like local government, simply lessen the pool of jobs which are available to young people.

Instead of job destruction it is job creation which is necessary to tackle this structural unemployment. Instead of handing over more money to the financial institutions (“quantitative easing”) socially useful production could create work and jobs. Ton take just one example, the debt which the government is imposing of local authorities for the new Housing Finance system (“self-financing”) is £28 billion. Swindon’s share of this is £145 million. The government could easily write off this debt, little more than a third of the £75 million for “quantitative easing”. This would provide local authorities with many millions more which they could spend on maintaining and improving their Council housing and building new homes. Of course, such work would require more workers. This would be both more productive and more socially useful than handing over more money to the financial institutions.

The idea that the Tory Party is not seeking to influence tenants is preposterous. In all sorts of subtle and crude ways, they and the senior officers on the Council are utilising all the resources at their disposal to win a yes vote. They are presenting ‘facts’ in a partial way, whilst desperately attempting to hide certain other facts from tenants.

At a Swindon Tenants Voice Meeting the other evening Russell committed a Freudian slip. Speaking about what would happen if the tenants voted in favour of transfer he began with, “If the ballot is successful…”

Even pro-transfer people on STV were complaining about the way they are being treated, for instance holding a “Shadow Board” meeting before the tenants are selected by the Council. Mr Holland’s contempt for tenants and even for the Residents Engagement Group was expressed by the fact that the Cabinet voted for Draft 3 of the Offer Document even though the REG had not yet finished discussing Draft 2!

At the full council meeting yesterday Mr Holland showed the degree of his mendacity in his answer to a question about the addresses of tenants which had been promised to STCG by Bernie Brannan and Brian Mattack on July 29^th. At a previous meeting of the full Council I had asked if the Council would give us the list of addresses (not the names) of tenants. The reply from Brian Mattack was that legal opinion said that it would be in breech of Data Protection . In response I referred to the fact that the Information Commissioner has condemned a number of Councils for failing to give this information to campaigns against transfer.

An email from Bernie Brannan giving his and Brian Mattacks’ response to some questions I raised with them, said “Brian and I have drafted a response to your questions below”. No doubt there then, “Brian and I”. And this is what they said in relation to the addresses:

“We are pleased to say that on further checking by our legal team, on whether we can release addresses of tenants to be balloted, they have now advised that this can be done.”

On further checking by our legal team…the second legal opinion.

On August 13^th Bernie Brannan promised me the addresses in a couple of days. But there was a problem. Mr Holland took over from Mr Mattack.

When asked by myself as to whether this commitment would be honoured by them Mr Holland replied in writing:

“I am not aware of any such commitment being made. At the time my predecessor held this portfolio the advice was that we could not release such personal information. We are evaluating the Data Protection implications of releasing such data and we will comply with all statutory regulations.”

Sitting 20 feet away from him was one Brian Mattock looking somewhat shamefaced, and no wonder. Did he not ask Brian Mattack and Bernie Brannan whether what I said was true? Had Mr Mattack developed a convenient case of amnesia? Mr Holland in reality has decided either not to give us the addresses or to give them at the very last possible moment – we shall see which. He wants to frustrate the efforts of the No campaign because he wants a Yes vote.

Yet in Housing Matters they could write that “To make sure everyone’s views are heard fairly the Councils hopes to work with…any interested groups”.

The Mendacity of Mr Holland was also reflected in another answer to one of my questions on the cost of the transfer of our housing stock. “How much private finance would be required to fund the transfer of our housing stock?” To which the extraordinary reply was given:

“Private finance is not used for housing stock transfers.”

Let’s think about that one for a minute. So who pays for them? The government?

As I have said before on here, the Council’s own transfer document – the document it sent to the government to put the case for transfer – said that:

“The funding section of the Tribal Transfer Valuation Model indicates that the private finance required to fund this proposed transfer is £197.5 million.”

Private finance, Mr Holland.

On this forum Mr Holland (Talk Swindon)  has said that he has accepted the veracity of the £197.5million. Yet in his written reply at the Council he refused to accept it, and in his reply to a question about interest rates, he shows that the debt that the Housing Association would have to take on is £67 million, though this is just the cost of flogging off the housing to the HA.

The Council officers and Mr Holland have fought might and main to keep the £197.5 million debt which the HA will have to take on, away from tenants eyes.

Mendacious is the polite word. How can anybody believe a word that Mr Holland says?

One of the Research Council picket lines in Swindon today. Around 150 people attended a town centre rally (see below), bringing together strikers from the PCS, NUT and

ATL and supporters.

“Our country faces major challenges

Families are struggling from the effects of the recession, and are worried about its impact on wages and jobs. Our communities feel under pressure. And our young people are finding the ladders up which they hoped to climb to a better future being kicked away.

We need a fresh approach. Our challenge is to ensure we have the right policies to build a better, fairer country. Whatever matters to you, we want to hear your views.

Because we know that politicians don’t have all the answers – we have to work together as a country if we are going to find solutions to the problems we face.”

The site says that they have 529 ideas so far. Well, I thought, I have an idea for number 530. So I typed in the following:

“Commit Labour to a mass Council house building programme. Abandon support for Thatcher’s policy of ‘right to buy’.”

A curious thing happened. A message popped up saying ‘please remove any inappropriate words’. Was it the word Thatcher? I deleted it and tried again. Same message, ‘please remove any inappropriate words’?

Any ideas what the inappropriate word or words might be?

Whatever his motivation the move sends a message about the ‘refounding’ of Labour that Miliband wants. Whilst apparently he wants to open up the gates of the Party to ‘supporters’ he moves to centralise power in his own hands.

Of course, it’s true that Labour has long accepted the rules of the Parliamentary game and all the medieval monarchist trappings. Prime Minsterial Patronage concentrates power in the hands of a party leader when his party is elected. It is a deeply corrupting influence based on the rewrds of the gravy train. If you have career aspirations you have to be careful not to fall out of favour with The Leader. Along with the extra money for minsterial jobs goes the ministerial car and all the rest. And then, as we saw from the last government, all these ‘aspirational’ ex-Ministers can be rewarded with ‘jobs’, many with the private sector companies that New labour had opened up the public sector to. The latest one to come to public notice is on the Board of that reputable company Southern Cross.

John McDonnell was quite right to oppose this extension of patronage on Radio 4 today, but he’s also right that Miliband will probably get his way. As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. It’s a familiar scenario. The leader has spoken. The leader has to be supported because if he isn’t then the media will talk of a split….ad nauseam.