Austerity Games get involved with Youth Fight for jobs

This summer London will play host to the costly Olympic Games. While many look forward to a 'summer of sport', in its shadow, workers and young people in London and around the country face, not just months of disruption and misery that go with the £24 billion games, but poverty and homelessness as the cuts bite.

Housing in London stands on the brink of a crisis. With more cuts to housing benefit due to come in next April, a new government-commissioned study has shown that 40% of London landlords plan to stop renting to housing benefit tenants in the next year, dwarfing the already high 33% nationally.


Tens of thousands of working and poor families face being forced out of their homes as a result of the changes. The increasing lack of affordable properties only promises to exacerbate the problem and force people onto the streets or into insecure, temporary accommodation.

The government argues that the changes will stop families from claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds for large properties in expensive areas at the expense of the taxpayer and that landlords will be forced to lower rents.

The reality is that greedy rip-off landlords, who are the real beneficiaries of housing benefit, will not lower rents. In fact, 37% of landlords in London have said they are more likely to evict tenants or not renew tenancy agreements, three times higher than the 11% that said they would consider lowering rents.

The reality is that over the last year there has been a 61% rise in the number of households with children living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and homelessness has seen increases of 14% nationally and 36% in London, with children increasingly at risk.

We refuse to accept the government's scaremongering attacks on so-called benefit scroungers to justify the return of Dickensian poverty stricken conditions.

While the real scroungers - the tax-avoiding super-rich - splash out on the luxury services on offer around the Olympic games (for between £295 and £4,500 per person you can get a champagne reception and four course dinner with your Olympic ticket) Youth Fight for Jobs will be organising to show workers and young people that, in the seventh richest country in the world, we can, and should, be afforded the right to a decent home and a decent future.

That is why young people and trade unionists from across the country will be sending teams to Hackney Marshes to compete in the Austerity Games on Monday 23 July - the week before the Olympics. We will be launching the Youth Fight for Jobs Manifesto: A Future for the 99%, which lays out the problems faced by young people in Britain today and a strategy of how to get organised and fight for a decent future.

We will be putting competitors through their paces with ten athletics events from the Race to the Bottom to the Deficit Discus and Property High Jump to highlight the plight of workers and young people, lost underneath these expensive and corporate Olympic Games.

To get involved in Youth Fight for Jobs or the Austerity Games email youthfightforjobs@gmail.com


Post originally written by Suzanne Beishon, London Youth Fight for Jobs

Camerons tories look to further attack young people time to get organised!

With the news over the weekend of David Cameron and his Tory chums plans to scrap housing benefit for all under 25’s which is the latest in a long line of austerity measures in order to make the poorest in society pay for a crisis they did not create. If ever there was a time to fight back and get organised it is now.

Youth fight for jobs which I’m involved in condemn this cynical move by the Tories to attack the youngest in society and force them out of homes and most likely into homelessness.

When we think about it with only an estimated 10 % of the cuts so far we haven’t really seen anything yet it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse yet. This is why we must stand against all cuts to start with uniting and bringing together as many people against the cuts as we can organising in our communities, trade unions, anti cuts organisations and in our workplaces.

Youth fight for jobs has been at the fore front of opposing the cuts on young people and campaigns for a mass programme of affordable house building and we mean affordable not the sort labour and the Tories consider affordable.

This summer just before the Olympics start in London YFFJ will be holding our own version of the games called the austerity games with clever sounding events to highlight the plight of young people and the cuts. This will hopefully attract some media coverage and push YFFJ’s name forward in the movement and highlight the attacks on young people.

Last year we marched 330 miles from Jarrow to London for jobs. Unfortunately the government didn’t listen we knew they wouldn’t but it paved the way for young people to re enter struggle since the fantastic student protests of 2010.

Young people deserve a future like everyone else let’s not fall for divide and rule tactics young people must get organised and link up with other workers under attack which is why I will be supporting the Coryton oil refinery workers in their fight to keep the refinery open and to preserve 850 jobs and 100 million pounds for the local economy. Only by linking up and uniting our struggles can we win.

Say no to Cameroons Tories say no to all the cuts and let’s fight for a socialist future for young people and a society which benefits all people.

The real Olympic legacy in London borough of Newham

Today in the news Labour run Newham council has created all sorts of controversy with their plans to exile the poorest in their borough to stoke on Trent of all places. This has been met with a volley of criticism rightly so in my view.

New ham council has been accused of starting "social cleansing" in the capital by asking a Stoke-on-Trent housing association to take on up to 500 families on housing benefit.
New ham Council says it can no longer afford to house tenants on its waiting list in private accommodation.
The gap between market rents and the housing allowance is too big, it says.
But the association says such a move could mark the start of "thousands of needy people" being dumped elsewhere.
Labour MPs say the decision to seek accommodation outside London is proof that the government's policy of capping housing benefit is already "beginning to unravel".
Which is of course easy to say when their own government in power failed to build anywhere near enough affordable homes in their 13 years in go?
The simple fact that 5 million people are currently on the housing register for council property in the UK is testament to the lack of homes built in the previous period.
It is a disgrace for labour to claim the moral high ground on this when their record on housing is so so poor. I think the outrage at this story is justified with the new labour MP for stoke equally shaming his party by coming out to say
Unwanted by New ham, unwanted by Stoke. "We look forward to the Olympic flame – but not east London's exiles" - Tristram Hunt.
Talking of the Olympics this borough of London is due to host the Olympics this summer with 40 million pounds of the council’s budget going towards putting on the Olympics disgracefully.
Olympic effect

New ham Council, which is Labour-controlled, is in the east of the city and will host this summer's Olympics.
It has written to the Brighter Futures Housing Association in Stoke, offering it the "opportunity" to lease homes to it.
The letter says the local private rental sector is beginning to "overheat" because of the "onset of the Olympic Games and the buoyant young professionals market".
It says the council can no longer afford to house tenants on its waiting list in private accommodation as the gap between market rents and the local housing allowance has become too great.
The council has been "forced to look further afield for alternative supply", it adds.
'Right-wing extremism'
The Brighter Futures chief executive officer, Gill Brown, has not formally replied to new ham Council's offer.

To me this is passing the buck one council cant and won’t deal with people who can’t afford to live in an area so decide to move them elsewhere so the other council where they are proposed to be going say oh no we don’t want them either. A typically middle class attitude of not in my backyard. An absolute shambles and a disgrace from a party who claims to stand for social justice.

It is clear that we need a major affordable house building programme today but who’s going to put it forward the tories and lib dems certainly wont and on this recent form labour wont either. We need a new workers party who can put forward these demands and speak for the majority of people ordinary people who are suffering due to this crisis of capitalism that they are being made to pay for unfairly.