The UN’s Special Rapporteur on adequate housing landed on our shores recently.
The BBC seemed to take her seriously. No mention of her loony, animal sacrificing, hard core Marxist, witch doctoring proclivities though.
Just as well that we have Guido Fawkes to bring us the low down on her.….not to mention the Daily Mail:
Raquel Rolnik: A dabbler in witchcraft who offered an animal sacrifice to Marx
Couple of questions the BBC might like to ask, apart from what are her own politics?….
First who asked her to bring her unique skills to this country and pronounce on the political process here?
It seems that it might have been the Unions…GMB and Unison seem to be in the frame, amongst others….no doubt the Labour Party were ‘kept informed’ of developments.
It is clear that this was part of the political fight and that she must knowingly have supported that fight…as the video from Guido shows….in which she is talking at an ‘Axe The Bedroom Tax’ meeting.
Second, what exactly does the UN say about ‘adequate housing’ provision?
The BBC tells us that…
The UK is a signatory to a number of international treaties which protect the right to adequate housing and non-discrimination.
Hardly informative…doesn’t give you the full picture of exactly what the UN requires a government to do….if it did you might start to question the UN’s role…and possibly the BBC doesn’t want to encourage that sort of independent thinking and questioning of authority…left wing type authority anyway.
So let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth….
The obligation to recognize the human right dimensions of housing and to ensure that no measures are taken with the intention of eroding the legal status of this right.
As defined by the first Special Rapporteur, “the human right to adequate housing is the right of every woman, man, youth and child to gain and sustain a safe and secure home and community in which to live in peace and dignity”.
This definition is in line with the core elements of the right to adequate housing as defined by General Comment No. 4 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
According to the Committee, while adequacy is determined in part by social, economic, cultural, climatic, ecological and other factors, it is nevertheless possible to identify certain aspects of the right that must be taken into account for this purpose in any particular context. They include the following: a) Legal security of tenure; b) Availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; c) Affordability; d) Habitability; e) Accessibility; f) Location; and g) Cultural adequacy.
The obligation imposed by the UN seems to be almost regardless of finanacial considerations…and indeed suggests that in time of economic hardship even more be spent on housing.
The obligation of States is to demonstrate that, in aggregate, the measures being taken are sufficient to realize the right to adequate housing for every individual in the shortest possible time using the maximum available resources.
This obligation “to achieve progressively” must be read in the light of article 11.1 of the Covenant, in particular the reference to the right to the “continuous improvement of living conditions”. The obligation of progressive realization, moreover, exists independently of any increase in resources. Above all, it requires effective use of resources available.
The UN’s demands seem based upon a utopian wish list that barely recognises the realities of the real world. They are amorphous and unlimited in scope…they are so open to interpretation that any government would be committed to housing anybody and everybody who turns up demanding a house…and not just a house…but the right to ‘security, peace and dignity’….and all at a price they can afford….and if that isn’t sufficient the government must ensure that people being housed also have the full enjoyment of other rights such as the right to freedom of expression and association…. ‘indispensable if the right to adequate housing is to be realized and maintained by all groups in society.’
Individuals, as well as families, are entitled to adequate housing regardless of age, economic status, group or other affiliation or status and other such factors.
In the Committee’s view, the right to housing should not be interpreted in a narrow or restrictive sense which equates it with, for example, the shelter provided by merely having a roof over one’s head or views shelter exclusively as a commodity. Rather it should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity.
“Adequate shelter means … adequate privacy, adequate space, adequate security, adequate lighting and ventilation, adequate basic infrastructure and adequate location with regard to work and basic facilities – all at a reasonable cost”.
Those ‘vulnerable and disadvadvantaged’ who need the UN’s help include…..
‘…in particular, homeless persons and families, those inadequately housed and without ready access to basic amenities, those living in “illegal” settlements, those subject to forced evictions and low-income groups.’
Reading the UN’s ‘Rights’ you come to the conclusion they are very worthy but unworkable being so open to interpretation and making such open ended demands of any government.
It would seem anybody could demand to be housed by the government as a ‘human right’ under this ‘Right’ and if there was no housing in a particular location, say near to someone’s job, the government would have to build it….‘adequate location with regard to work and basic facilities’….and be forced to provide provision for those in ‘illegal settlements’….so all those travellers or the numerous Romanians sleeping rough in London would have to be housed on demand….and presumably any other immigrant to this country who just strolls in legal or not.
All sounds pretty sensible and reasonable to me.
Can see why the BBC might not want to dig too deeply into that…might make people question the UN, and why an unelected body can interfere so radically with the internal politics and economic running of a country, overturning the legal, and approved by Parliament, policies of a sovereign government…and why any government would sign up to such overbearing and intrusive legislation especially if it can seemingly be imposed by the ruling of one, highly partisan, person who seems to have invited herself into the country and pronounced judgment based on a few days roaming around the UK whilst having her hand held by campaign groups opposed to the government’s housing policy.
Finally from 1944 and the first inklings of what the UN might look like are suggested…by newspaper editor Cecil H King:
As a result of the conference at Dumbarton Oaks, a tentative scheme has been put forwrd for a world security organization. It is very like the old League of Nations and quite clearly won’t work. There are to be five permanent members of the Executive Council: Russia, America and Britain, together with China and France! The first clause of the proposals records the sovereign freedom and independence of every state represented in the new league. This means that we go on record with the statement that Nicaragua and Russia are equally free, independent, sovereign states. This is mischievous rubbish. The fiction that France is one of the world’s great powers and that Germany and Japan are not, is another obvious source of trouble. The Russians, moreover, are insisting on the right of veto in any case involving sanctions. If ever there was a stillborn scheme, this is it.
Can’t say he was wrong…..Russia is proving to be the exact thorn in the side that King predicted and the UN a toothless, ineffective, corrupt body….Though Sheila Fogarty claimed that Russia was only interested in ensuring the survival of the UN security council as a bulwark for peace….no mention of its own extensive interests in the survival of the Syrian regime.
Doesn’t she look like Sybill Trelawney?
Or maybe an older Rita Skeeter
I think you were right with the first one, Sybill Trelawney. I hadn’t a clue as to who Ms. trelawney might be but the Google image results had me spluttering coffee over my keyboard.
Fictitious characters moonlighting for the UN – sounds about right.
I was thinking Edith Prickley.
I think she is like the mad catwoman from The Simpsons.
Yep Sybil wins it
About 90% of this posting is irrelevant and extremely boring. If you look elsewhere on the Internet you will find leftists bemoaning the fact that this woman was given an absolute pasting on BBC News by an interviewer who has connections with David Cameron. They’re calling it pro-government bias. And, like you, they’re convinced they’re right. She’s a Marxist nutter all right, but I defy you to substantiate the wilder accusations of that Daily Mail piece, which has a distinct whiff of fantasy to it.
‘If you look elsewhere on the Internet you will find leftists bemoaning the fact that this woman was given an absolute pasting on BBC News’
One sure it exists.
So it would be relevant and most interesting if shared (Pointing folk ‘elsewhere’ is a very BBC thing).
May not change much, but would help the balance.
I’m awfully sorry but pouring scorn on a story simply because it appears in a newspaper you don’t approve of and believe has a ‘whiff of fantasy to it’ simply isn’t good enough. If it’s a lie, no doubt she will sue. Or at least make some effort to deny the tale.
And while we’re at it, the ‘both sides complained therefore we must be right’ card was maxed out a few years ago and has been cancellled.
Roll up, roll up. Anyone want to see the BBC pasting a Marxist? Really, I hope this is not what CTC’s leftists are referring to as a pasting, but I think it is. If it is, they are delusional, lying or both. The ‘pasting’ starts
at 2:55.
As you say, “some pasting”!
The bias actually starts 29 seconds in with the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Norman Smith:
“… the bedroom tax, or “the spare room subsidy” as the government calls it, … ”
You got that wrong, Norman, if you are trying to present facts and not the BBC’s opinions.
Then followed by a screeching left-wing harridan, whose “statements” are obviously rehearsed propaganda enabling her to go on non-stop without repetition, hesitation or deviation, just like Comrade Castro used to do in his speeches.
‘The BBC has become quite keen on (WhatLabourCalls) the Bedroom Tax’
And lo, what was the word, became the word….
‘BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Norman Smith:
“… the bedroom tax, or “the spare room subsidy” as the government calls it, ‘
OK, a bit twisted, as Norman seems to be. He in fact may have to answer for choosing to put it that way round.
By precedent, how’d they respond to…
The BBC, a nest of pinko vipers, or the most trusted and transparent media monopoly as they keep trying to tell it…
If the BBC and Labour see fit to hitch to her wagon… good luck with that.
Norman’s sense is… leaving him.
Did I hear the Beeboid presenter actually say that using the term “bedroom tax” implies an agenda? No mirrors in Broadcasting House? Norman Smith did the same thing. And it’s not a kicking from the sacred UN as he falsely claimed. It actually is a preliminary media blitz from this woman. As she said herself the official report and statement from the UN hasn’t happened yet, and won’t for some time.
Reading out Shapp’s complaints to her – identified as such, and not presented as the interviewer doing her job and asking challenging questions – is a pasting?
Typical “complaints from both sides”.
Have to say that headline had me worried for a second.
And the actual image that greeted one was worse than imagined.
‘very worthy but unworkable being so open to interpretation’
Hence perfect for a BBC heat over light campaign to boost its idealistic good guys and curse any sensible pragmatists trying to juggle still very shaky books.
They tried it this week with Huhne and then this barking Brazilian.
And both times it has backfired.
Quite when they get held to account vs. being offered endless time and resources to throw mud until something sticks, who knows?
Sacrificing animals to Marx doesn’t exactly sound like dialectical materialism. Couldn’t someone at the BBC have put her right?
Is that lace or a complicated tattoo?
She has stolen Rooney’s arms.
This woman is a waste of this planet’s oxygen.
Can some of us agree that plucky Assad is fighting Islamic terrorism and, as such, that we should be on his side as a lesser of two evils?
This ‘us’ being… who again?
And just possibly, a view better expressed on a thread, and blog, about Islamic terrorism?
Odd that ‘Men’ hasn’t been attracted to this post at all, but is gamboling like a mad thing everywhere else.
It’s only coincidental that Assad is fighting Islamic terrorism. There’s nothing wrong with being against both sides, and desiring to encourage a better-coordinated regime change instead of arming the cavemen like we’re doing.
I dismiss these posts before they get out of the blocks.
You don’t agree with her. That doesn’t equal bias.
I do wish you’d comprehend that point.
So, in other words you dismiss them because you don’t like them.
Hypocritical humbug, in that case.
Yep, that’s what I said.
You really are an arse. Stick to the ‘chemical restraint’ and lobotomies that you mad house doctors love to inflict on ‘political enemies’ (check out what happened to a non exec director of the CQC when she tried to let the public know about the cover ups of 20,000 excess deaths prior to an election and then read some Solzhenitsyn to see if a fag paper can be fitted between the behaviour of the CQC and ther NKVD)
The point is this ranting marxist extremist was wheeled out by the BBC on the prime slot on the today programme precisely because she would attack the Govt policy and would fit in with the tories are evil bastards meme. She was herself almost a text book definition of a biased and unreliable witness who came with a preconceived agenda – a blatant prejudice.
No validation of her claims was supplied and it was quite clear that no research had been done by the BBC. She was there purely to embarrass the minister who – for once – gave the bolsheviks both barrels.
The Bias was very apperent in the editorial decision to run the story and the way in which it was pitched
Are you serious? As you acknowledge, Grant Shapps demolished her. Her presence and idiotic utterances were high profile events reported everywhere. Yet reporting the activities of a UN official, and allowing a cabinet minister to flatten her in an argument, is ‘bias’?
‘Her presence and idiotic utterances were high profile events reported everywhere’
I rather got the impression her presence and utterances were of Daily Record profile level until elevated by the BBC to top of the hour status. And not because of their idiocy. The BBC has become quite keen on (WhatLabourCalls) the Bedroom Tax. Pulling a Tracey Emin on it now would be… out of character.
Huhne, this lady, and that MP Mr. Katz got creamed for dissing… all suddenly selected by the BBC from niche paper obscurity for the full monty profile… because the BBC was really setting them all up for the fall they delivered themselves, and themselves alone, due to the paucity of their cases and argument. Uh-huh.
But you do seem serious going with that.
“I don’t understand how news works.”
“Don’t question the priest caste.”
The BBC “allowed” Shapps to demolish her? Hardly. Which guest did Montague challenge, and which one was met not only with soft “Mmmms”, but was actually helped along in expressing her thoughts? To which one did she raise her voice?
This isn’t about not liking what a guest said.
The fact that the BBC’s attempted attack on the government failed is no mitigation. Their intention was to use the UN to attack the welfare reforms and to fundamentally discredit the government. As they were grossly incompetent they didn’t bother checking the report or any of the allegations nor the fact that the author was a text book shrieking partisan marxist.
The BBC saw this as a golden opportunity – they failed – and I maintain that the intention that the only reason that this shoddy and partisan piece of work got on to the UK’s No1 political news slot was fundamental bias and animus against the government
‘As they were grossly incompetent they didn’t bother checking the report or any of the allegations nor the fact that the author was a text book shrieking partisan marxist.’
In the case of the latter point, that would not have raised any flags.
You say ‘ranting marxist extremist’.
I say ‘UN Special Rapporteur ‘.
Not too long.
Did read.
Fell about laughing.
Well done.
One and the same thing surely?
‘I dismiss these posts before they get out of the blocks’
Logic fail as you clearly don’t, but confusion noted.
Some (not me, self-evidently), probably do the same with yours without rushing to advertise what they don’t do.
Just thought that was worth pointing out.
I do. I just did.
You’re probably not the best person to lecture on logic. Or in other words; logic, lecture, you, no.
If you say so.
Working well for you, too.
Readers might want to research the UN Agenda 21, which has a lot to say on housing (Google it and try to ignore the nutter sites). Have you seen recent developments of blocks of flat in which the ground floor is always given over to shopping? That stems largely from Agenda 21. Although it is has never been incorporated into US law or even debated by Congress, more than 100 US cities have signed up for it.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any place in NYC that doesn’t have shops in the ground floor and residential above, and I don’t mean only new buildings. It seems like a natural phenomenon in a way for a dense-ish urban neighborhood.
There will indeed be some places where it already exists or makes sense. The point is that Agenda 21 specifically advocates high-density urban housing of this sort, restrictions on private home and land ownership, restrictions on personal transport and so on. Much of it is totalitarian in nature and something which is being implemented in US and European towns and cities without public awareness or discussion. Certainly don’t expect to hear in mentioned on the BBC or other media when discussing planning issues or when a loopy UN inspector comes calling.
Fair enough. Nanny Bloomberg has done some of that all on his own. He put in place rules severely limiting parking space allowed in new building construction, with the intent to force more people to walk or use public transportation. That’s on top of all the other things he’s done to try and legislate people’s behavior according to his personal wishes. He fits right in with this crowd.
I guess senior government ministers, ministers, representatives, local Councillors, district Councillors all ‘important’ civil servants and local government officials, police, fire, head teachers and every other state funded apparatchik is give a “free parking for your limo” pass.
Anyone recall the London “ZiL lanes” or the fully armed Apache helicopters constantly circling over central London when the Blessed O’Bomber was in town? A 7watt mercury vapour lamp, shit cold buses and no central heating for you with two saccharine tablets a week as a treat are all you are going to be allowed under Agenda 21
We proles need to know our place if we are ‘going to save the planet’ – after all senior BBC management can give themselves £60 million – because they deserve it and we don’t apparently.
‘illegal settlements’? Presumably not Israeli ones in Judea and Samaria.
Just to take issue with the title post Alan.
What the treaty obliges the UK to do is not really at issue, the UK signed it freely and in full knowledge of its content, now it’s a little late to start to crib about those clauses.
you thought watching it was bad david vance,you should of listened to question time extra on radio 5 live with stephen nolan and the ultra liberal john pienar,that was just one big left wing love in if you have ever heard one.
Is there no accountants in the bbc that can figure out.that sales minus expenses equals profit.
The UN has an impractical view of the world with unrealistic standards. BUT WE SIGNED THE DAMN DOCUMENTS. More fool us!
In reply to you Lojo and Thoughtful above, I disagree.
WE did not sign the documents: our governments did without our consultation nor permission.
the un are like william haugue,nobody listens to them, and quiet frankly i am sick and tired and bored of hearing them condemming this and condemming that,what they say has no bearings on world events anymore.
People do listen to the UN – or, perhaps more accurately, cite them as the ultimate authority – when it’s convenient for their agenda, though. Which begs the question: who invited her to come look at the the cruel Conservatives’ draconian housing policy in the first place? It’s hard to tell from her own babbling who actually invited her. She talks as if she has a
divineUN mandate to swoop down anywhere on the planet and pass judgment. Is that really it? She claimed that the government invited her, but was clearly caught lying. Five points to the BBC for daring to read out Shapps’ charges against her, but deduct ten for not pressing it when it turned out she lied.So somebody connected to Britain’s UK delegation to the UN invited her, or something. It’s still not clear to me exactly how this happened, and the BBC seemed uninterested in finding out. It sure is a happy coincidence that she turned up to echo Labour talking points right while this is a hot-button issue. Not that the BBC would question the timing.
If the Tories did give permission when she filled out the official request form or whatever, and are now just upset that they did this to themselves, different story.
Does anyone actually know how this happened?
Stuart – The UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is a significant influence on our lives and has been for years. UN Agenda 21 is the ‘mitigating actions against climate change’ writ large. Whenever you read or hear the terms ‘sustainablilty’ or ‘social justice’, these are the pillars upon which a UN eco-socialist (totalitarian) world government are being built. Can recommend you read up on it – it’s like a hopey-changey touchy-feely version of 1984.
When last did this idiot see the inside of a bedroom?
Only after eating cheese