Them and us fishes, photo Suzanne Beishon

Them and us fishes, photo Suzanne Beishon   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Handouts for prince

A multibillionaire Saudi prince receives over £400,000 in European Union handouts – just to breed racehorses.

Khalid Abdullah al Saud is one of the UK’s top farming subsidy recipients. The EU parcels out taxpayers’ money on the basis of amount of land owned, rather than benefit to the public.

The queen is also a top beneficiary. Estates she owns or part-owns get £557,707.

To be fair, Elizabeth II only owns one manor house in Norfolk. And a castle in Scotland. And 18,454 hectares of land.

Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are actually loans from the public. Apparently we can find no other use for their combined 465 bedrooms.

The Socialist says: stop subsidising big landowners. Nationalise the land. Spend the cash on homes, green energy, conservation and sustainable farming.

Homelessness for us

A top property developer has kept a Mayfair apartment block built for working class tenants empty for a year.

British Land bought up land in the exclusive London district to throw up more luxury apartments. But planning rules meant it also had to build some low-rent flats for social tenants and key workers.

The firm claims it had “no concern that the marketing of one would affect the success of the other.”

But it also blames the delay on the difficulty of attracting or becoming a registered social landlord. The only reason to do this is because such landlords have the power to filter out some ‘undesirable’ council tenants.

Other developers have kept super-rich clients happy with segregated entrances – known as “poor doors”.

No to poor doors. Reverse the social cleansing of inner city areas. For high-quality, genuinely affordable, secure homes for all.