How Property Developers Wage War on the Working Class
The Owen Jones Podcast
Owen Jones
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2021
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's the swimming pool in the sky: the so called 'Sky Pool' in Nine Elms, south London, which wowed the media but which sums up the inequality ravaging British society. This community provided the perfect opportunity to help tackle London's housing crisis - but instead it was handed to property developers to build luxury flats for the elite. This is a story about how settled working class communities are being torn apart by greed. But those working class voices have been erased from the conversation: in this documentary, we hand them the megaphone.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A swimming pool in the sky. This is the sky pool in 9 Ls. In the heart of London |
| 0:06.2 | where the well-to-do can breaststroke a 115 feet above the ground while families |
| 0:11.8 | nearby depend on food banks to survive and 40% of children live in poverty. If you |
| 0:17.9 | want to see the inequality that doesn't just scarred it but defines it, here's |
| 0:22.2 | as good a place as any. Working class communities like those nearby are being |
| 0:27.3 | ripped apart. Around this former industrial area, families set down roots for |
| 0:32.9 | generations. It is where they worked, lived, loved, had their children, their |
| 0:37.6 | grandchildren too. But they've been told in act indeed that this place isn't |
| 0:43.0 | for them. As property developers who treat housing as a lucrative investment, |
| 0:47.4 | not as a basic human need, build only for the well-to-do and financially |
| 0:52.6 | thriving. There's a lesson here. This inequality isn't a fact of life. |
| 0:57.2 | Like the weather, but the consequence of decisions made by the powerful. I've |
| 1:02.1 | come to 9 Ls to speak to local residents and I meet up with Iden Dickenham. |
| 1:06.8 | He's a local labour councillor and he lives and breathes this community. |
| 1:12.0 | It is, you know, like London, people live in Cheap by Jail but from very different |
| 1:15.8 | walks of life, a huge inequality. Sadly we're about to see a food bank open in |
| 1:22.3 | the Avon car center on Pat Morris State, but in the same ward and within, you know, |
| 1:28.2 | throwing distance of what is a total transformation of the riverside. |
| 1:33.1 | So huge, huge inequality, very visually stark inequality, which I think is |
| 1:37.8 | something that has brought more attention on this area. And when you get down |
| 1:42.9 | into the detail of it, a lot of what's happened here is a result of political |
| 1:47.4 | decisions and I think that's really important to put across. |
... |
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