Eviction of families from local authority, or housing association accommodation on conviction of any family member being involved in riot-related offences.

[Pan]

This has triggered a wide-ranging debate on the reasonableness of this measure. What we do know is that entire families are now liable to homelessness due to the actions of one person in the family. The tactic used to enable this is the commonly-applied clause to be of 'good behaviour'. This is designed to protect other tenants in the vicinity from anti-social behaviour. We know that approx. 70% of offenders here do not live in that vicinity. LAs DO NOT accept responsibility for abti-social behaviour in other boroughs.

The proposed actions are discriminatory against LA/HA tenants per se (as compared with owner-occupiers/private tenants, and will fall hardest on single parent mothers with sons who have offended recently.

Is it reasonable to ask MN to use their voice/influence to raise a public campaign against these measures before a case precedent is established that can be used by LA/HAs to assist in their evictions policy?

I woudn't get chucked out because I have put the time and effort into being a good parent and know that my kids wouldn't join in the riots and would shop someone if they were offered stoled good - I have brought them up properly - if you haven't and your kid is out looting and rioting well maybe you will look back and others will look around and realise they have to be better parents and have kids because they want to bring them up into decent educated human beings not feral scum with no respect for anyone else.

it isn't either/or.

No i don't support criminals. Broke tenancy agreement that applies to the household.

I don't support criminals either, coccyx. This measure is about punishing people who aren't criminals.

Maybe punsihing those who aren't criminals will make them sit up and be better parents rather than letting their kids grow up roaming the streets and behaving like thugs terrorising others.

add me in to the not happy camp. The first case involves an 18 year old with a mother and 8 year old sister, if newspaper reports are to be believed. He hasn't even been convicted yet, although I shouldn't think there is much doubt about that. He will probably be provided with alternative housing at the taxpayers expense for at least 6 months anyway, why penalise his sister?

We seem to be having a tendency to see all of these offenders as being a homogenious group, and then having the freedom to call them scum, bastards, need sterilising, 10 years hard labour as a sentence, and all else of abuse being thrown at them, as a collective.

so. a 12 y.o boy steals a bottle of wine.
so. an adult drives a car killing 3 innocent men.
so. someone starts a fire in a building with no concern about who lives there. so. a 15 y.o turns up at court with no parent with him.
so an 11 y.o girl appears in court and is bailed back to her foster-carers home.

I guess this is an appeal to stop castigating everyone who offended in these riot situations as if they are all the same, when court appearances show they are not.

MadameCastafiore are the upper and middle class Uni students, who trashed central London earlier in the year because the government decided to stop subbing their education, feral scum? or does that description only apply to people who you think are on the bread line?.

All stepped over the line and broke the law.

they did indeed. this doesn't make them all 'scum' for example.

No thought they were feral scum too.

ok.

so are all of their family members feral scum too, worthy of homelessness?

The moth

Sorry!!

The mother may have had years of trouble from her son. Think he should be the one kicked out in this case as he's over 18

so... do you want the penalty for receiving a pair of stolen shorts to be increased to 6 months in jail, removal of children and eviction of all blood relatives into the street, across the board, at all times and in all places across the UK?

Or..... are you perhaps indulging a sub-judgemental kneejerk reaction to the news reports and chiming in with the general blood-baying of the past week? In which case you should know better.

I think there are much wider issues here and it's not as simple as people being evicted or not.

We have become a very liberal society over the past 50 years and the question has to be how much more liberal do we wish to become?

If we all decide to do what we want when we went without any consideration for others or the wider society then do we get ourselves into a position where we have anarchy? I think our sense of responsibility has changed since our parents generation (those born in the 40 & 50's).

My own sense is that we all share the blame for what happened and we cannot not the politicians, the police or the law. We have demanded much over the past 5 decades in terms of human rights and liberty and rightly so but we do have to careful what we wish for.

There has to be some rules and respect for each other whereby we live cheek by jowl with others. This is a pretty crowded country and compared to the rest of the world, one of the most tolerant. Let's not spoil that by always blaming someone else, lets look at ourselves and reflect on our own demands and behaviour. Perhaps that will be a starting point for everyone and a benefit for society as a whole.

For example, rather than another petition/campaign to the powers that be, why don't we set up some sort of mentoring scheme to help vulnerable families, single mothers etc. Lets come up with ideas that can help others rather than whinging about whoever is on power is or isn't doing? I think education is the key!

I'm on the fence about the eviction because it will do no good in the longer term, on the other hand people have broken their tenancy agreements. Tough call this one.

I won't be signing anything. People will get what they rightly deserve.

I feel too upset about the riots to care too much about what happens to those convicted. Sorry. Not saying necessarily that it is the 'right thing' to evict whole families - but that tenancy agreement applies to every person in a household. Councils are just enforcing their own rules and acting within their rights. If they are not reasonable then the court hearing will not allow the eviction surely?

Part of me does just think - why should convicted looters continue to live in a house provided by taxpayers money when many law abiding families are in b&b's, or in overcrowded houses, on waiting lists for council accommodation?

It's not something I would feel strongly enough about to campaign against I'm afraid - it just seems a little too sympathetic to the rioters.

I'll leave you to your campaign now - I can see it is something that some people here feel strongly about. Just wanted to register a different opinion.

and that's fine Daphne - but this sin't about evicting the guilty - if it was I too would be equivocal about it.

but itis about punishing the innocent members of families.

what do you think the social consequences of venting your rage at people indiscriminately like this? What will be the consequences for the law? What will be the benefit to all of us of having all these families slung out of their homes? Do you really think we can just bin people and forget all about them?

THINK rfgs

Count me in, Pan.

We already have laws and powers to deal with criminal rioters. What we havent had is police on the ground or courts dealong with them up to now. Ive seen years of soft sentencing, years of police ignoring anti socila behaviour (someone mentioned that poor woman and disabled child)
We dont need knee jerk draconian measures pushed through, we need to use the laws we have and have zero tolerance. I lived in NYC and saw zero tolerance of small crime and anti social behaviour have a huge impact. We could do that here but theres no will nor money.
Not throw innocent people out on the streets because of what a blood relative has done.

I really don't understand why people don't get that there's a difference between the rioters (a minority) and everyone else in their community.