Well Tracy Laing is beyond the pale but Hazel Blears has paid nothing back.

That voluntary cheque she sent off will just sit on her self assessment record as a payment on account. Assuming she has paid the correct amount of income tax on her income for the year ended 5 April 2010 then when her tax return is examined she will get that cheque back. Should she owe tax then her supposed vountary payment will be set against that.

Hazel Blears should not have been reselected we Salford voters do not want to vote for her and I am in a dilemna because I am a Labour supporter. I will vote for an Independant candidate however.

There is still time for her to do a honourable thing and go now.

Langworthy residents were driven out of there home, many who had lived & bought properties many years ago when it was a good area to live. these same residents sold there houses for pittance to private landloards just to escape the how bad the area had become, many good Salford people were not helped & left the area for good.
Are we now saying the regeneration in the Langworthy area as helped local people? I am not saying what we see now in the langworthy area is a bad thing (far from it) but was the regeneration of the houses made affordabe to the very people who were originally forced to move from the area?

Residents were forced out because of the Tory Benefit rules on Housing Benefit going straight to the Landlord, I think pushed through by a certain Mr Heseltine who had thousands of residents.
Under the regeneration the people who were left were given new homes which had been modernised under the ground breaking homeswap scheme. My mate paid £25,000 for his house near Chimney Pot park, he was homeswapped further to the back of the school house now worth £90,000 still got the same mortgage as well. Over 900 homes given new doors, windows, roofs, now 29 residents associations in the Langworthy area. Since 2003 the area has won the best community effect in Britain In Bloom, plus many other prizes who would have thought from that day in 1998 when Jack Straw was dragged around Langworthy By Hazel Blears that rows of Terraced houses would win Britain in Bloom, the area gets visitors from all over the country to see good neighbourhoods in action and the award winning alleygating scheme cutting down crime and increasing the sense of community and providing safe places for children to play. Bl00dy hell I sound like a tourism salesman.
The Langworthy model is being copied Citywide with many other groups now trying their luck with Britain In Bloom, alleygating schemes and new residents associations.
Sales pitch over

Who am I to argue! I do know others who were not so lucky! Overall I think Langworthy as a lot of positives & would not argue with some of your points!
I am sorry to say I used to knock on doors for the labour party but having been an active member of the party, ufortunately I will not be voting for our Hazel!

Redgunner it is a democracy so you are free to vote as you wish, all I have done is pointed out the stuff the press don't want to print even the Advertiser, the good news stories. I have hundreds, I too know people who gave up their keys and just moved out, but because of the second house they bought in Langworthy across from the one they left, made them over £100,000 when they sold it a couple of years back they now have cleared what they owed on the first one and now live elsewhere.

Come on Pev you know many people were totally unhappy with the 'regeneration' that went on. For everyone you know who made a profit on it there were equally as many who were shoved out of their homes and offered paltry sums in return. The area should have been regenerated and the new properties made available to the same people who lived in them before at affordable prices, no matter what the previous Tory government had done in regards housing legislation. It seems Labour were happy to invest in regeneration aslong as they could 'regenerate' the people who lived there as well!

Upto this week I was going to vote for Blears on the belief I would rather see a Labour government no matter how right wing rather than a Tory one. However, looking through the profiles of those candidates has changed my mind and I'm going to vote for David Henry. He's a socialist and seems like he cares about the local area. Hazel Blears no doubt has done some good and actually cares for Salford however she has tarnished herself not just with the expenses scandal but with her record in office. The loyalist of loyal Blairites she did whatever she could to climb the ministerial ladder and then when she realised she was going to get the boot from cabinet she quit in an attempt to bring down Gordon Brown and cause maximum damage just before the European and Local Elections. She then apologised after the event when it was clear she had failed to topple Brown. She doesn't deserve to be sent back to Parliament by the people of Salford and I would feel very dirty voting for her anyway!

Not sure why there is two socialist independents as surely they will just split each others vote.

That's pretty much the life story of left wing politics. Think "People's Front of Judea".

Just checked the BBC website and they don't list the religious nutter or the other socialist candidate as standing so hopefully people will get behind David Henry and the vote won't be split.

Aye.

Notably, Henry was the guy who tried to perform a citizen's arrest on Hazel Blears. He will probably get decent publicity from Salford Star, although they pledge to be impartial.

Walshovski i know where you are coming from about people losing out and people gaining, having sat on the partnership board which oversaw much of the regeneration i also meet a lot of these people. The basics were the housing market had collapsed in Seedley with the "market value" averaging about £7,000 for homes bought at between £25,000 and £30,000, I had one. Without the regeneration the whole area would have gone, but we only had a finite amount £13.75m between 4000 households so we had to attract outside investment which amounted to £70m over the last ten years. The council could only give "market value" so what happens as the first phases are carried out some values went up after 4 years Langworthy North had been done but only a small movement house back upto pre crash levels. then the Bombshell Two major building contracters pulled out, the choice now level all the houses from the Park to the Langworthy and grass it over or find another builder.
The find another biulder option was best to maintain house values, when Urban Splash came in they said the houses would be between £30,000 and £50,000, but then the "market forces" took over again, the prices of houses in other parts of Langworthy shot up to an average £75,000, now if Urban Splash sell there owns for £30,000 they undermine the existing Housing market which has just seen the raise and saw many people put their homes on the market and making a killing, even private landlords who didn't realise that work had been done were putting rents up.
So if the council would have insisted on a set price they would have called by the existing owners who now had equity in their homes. Sorry to go on so long but I spent many a sleepless night going over and over the same problem, knowing that in 1989 when the council tried to hold down the market price with a developer the said developer walked away and i was left looking at a croft for 4 years where my old house had been.
PS residents were given first choice and a small discount, and from memory about 12 residents bought the Urban Splash homes, many to rent out, and so the cycle starts again.

No one was forced out of anywhere. Does Labour housing benefit go straight to the landlord?

It is also worth remembering that Hazel Blears made £45,000 from the sale of houses that were not subject to capital gains tax. The £13,00 she falsely cliams to have paid back was only the tax element of that profit.

As there is no legal requirement for her to pay any more money, as frankb points out it will simply be offset against any future tax liability or returned.

How much is £45,000 in relative terms to a resident of Salford who she passionately claims to want represent?

Got Blears leaflet through the door, needless to say it went straight in the in bin!

Many residents suffered anti-social behaviour and just got fed up, put the house on the market and got out of the area taking what ever price they could get with massive negative equity.
There is now a Landlord licencing scheme where the landlord has to take responsiblity for their tenants,and maintain the residence in a fit and proper manner, benefit is now paid to the tenant so it means the Landlord will occasionally have to visit the tenant, some landlords have recently been fined £5000 for not signing up to the scheme.

Pev even though I have some different views on various things than you have,apart from the Salford City Reds,I admire the way that you fight your corner and put your points of view.

Hazel is seen by many as a good MP although many others feel that she could have done better, her efforts on behalf of the SCR is or should be well known and the three MPs have all been supportive of the club over several years and even though her cheque flashing episode and the Blue Peter Badge joke alienated some people from her she was in my opinion let down and hung out to dry by GB and his cohorts who went easy on their friends and left Hazel to fend for herself.

On the question of landlord licencing scheme which I feel is a forward looking step does this mean that City West and Salix etc have to abide by the same rules and regulations?

I ask this question due to the fact that on my travels around the local areas of
Swinton, Walkden, Little Hulton, Clifton,,Salford I notice many examples of properties, some relatively new housing stock, all run by the organisation's mentioned who appear to be in need of a visit from the landlord and for the same landlord to take some responsibility for its tenants and to maintain it in a fit and proper manner.

I think it is only the small landlords, but I may be wrong I remember bring up that point when the idea first came up and I can not remember the outcome but the answer is on the Council website, I too have a few choice words for some of these "new" landlords, after a case I am dealing with who is a tenant of City West "we're about getting things done" well he has more damp in his flat than Niagara and he has been passed from pillar to post, they even appear to ignore concillors who raise points for the tenants, even though they have some on the board.

dress a monkey in red yellow in Salford and it will be elected. we will get the M.P. that the people want. Why not for once shake them up and rid the city of complacent representitives?

Hazel out to 1/10 with bet365

So despite payment to tenants and shifting to a chosen provider, the same problems exist??

No I can see you are not from Salford, these "new" landlords are the council houses which have been transfered to new with the management companies ie the housing department in Salford has been spilt into various companies, unfortunately some of the properties are fit for habitation and when problems arise with the property noboby seems answerable. the New management companies have councillors, tenants and housing staff on their boards and are now in charge of most if not all of the old council housing stock.Plus they have also inherited the original tenants as well, and as these were previous council houses there is no negative equity for teants who rent.
So a totally different arguement to the housing benefits one.

Eh?

New landlords, payment to tenants but you say problems getting properties taken care of properly is still a problem. You said this was what happened under private landlords who you claim caused the area to degenrate??

What I said was the area was nearly 100% private home ownership, the rent going straight to landlords meant they didn't care who they put in or the state of the property, so the private owners saw the value of their properties collapse because of the influx of "problem families"
These new "landlords" managers is all ex council stock, ie no private owners, you know the ones, people can wreck their property and the council used to come out to fix it.
So all council houses are now under these new management companies so the depreciation is on paper not from a homeowners investment. So we still have "sink" estates which were used as dumping grounds for many which are now out of council control, it is only when these problem families enter into the private estates of home owners do we see a collapse in house prices as happened in many Towns and Citys throughout Great Britain.

So private homeownwrs sold out to landlords? What's the problem with that? If anyone is at fault for taking the money and running it's the homeowners for selling up!

Depreciation is on paper? That means the burdeen is then shifted to all council tax payers, not just a few homeowners. How is that right?

I am sorry but under Labour we saw year on year escalation of house prices. I think you are somewhat over estimating the movement of 'problem families' as you put them throughout the country. Movement from one social housing group to another perhaps, but to suggest wrecking of private housing stock countrywide is over egging it a bit. I would guess the vast majority of private landlords who own decent properties are very careful about who they allow to rent.

Not my estimation but I remember watching I think either Newsnight or Panarama in 2001/2002 which looked at this problem, I know at the time they did a programme on Langworthy and kept refering to it as the Langworthy Estate, which was another place entirely different, and comparing the private dwellings with the council estates. The programmes looked at the private sector in a number of cities in Great Britain, and from this came a Government programme, called Guide Neighbourhoods of which Langworthy became one of 15 selected from over 100 who applyed nationwide who had all suffered the same depreciation to demonstrate good practice in the aftermouth.

Depreciation is only an accountancy term for council house values, the rent still comes in whatever the current value of the property so the council still gets it money in to pay its capital returns.

Vote NON SUITABLE!!! It counts as a vote so it cannot be disregarded as a non turnout but it registers your dissatisfaction with the alternatives. we have a political system which is more like USA each year and most candidates now will promise the Earth and deliver little.
As for Blears, wasn't she the one who signed the papers rubber stamping the closure of the maternity ward at Hope and then appeared on the picket line opposing it. And there was me thinking it was the Liberals who were famous for fence sitting!