Labourites collapse on house sales

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you deny that you regularly he said. "And naked you will It was the Express. "Can came into this world naked" take off all your clothes?" go out of it. It says so in this Labour councils all over the country are meekly carrying out the Tory ultimatum to sell off stocks of council houses at a time when new council house buildstill.

15,000 council houses are empty because local authorities-hit by Tory cuts -cannot afford to repait them. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are homeless.

Yet once again council leaders have buckled under to threats from Environment Secretary Heseltine to sell off the precious houses at cut price terms.

The Tories place great store on this: it is central to their measures to increase the profits and rack-renting of private landlords, developers and property spiys.

As council property is snatched out of public hands and placed in the private market, the housing queues grow longer-and ients lot private accommodation, together with the prices of private homes for sale, can rise even hisher.

This speus abject misery for working class familiesand rich pickings for the property-owning elite.

Last week the Tories delightedly revealed that all but one of the last seven Labour-controlled councils that had held out against this cynical measure had fallen into line.

barking, Camden, Newham, Shettield, Stoke-onTrent and Wolverhampton councils have all begun to implement the sales-with Sheffield having been set the target of disposing of 100 houses a week between now and February.

They are now no longer faced with the prospect of a confrontation with Heseltine. Only Greenwich council is still threatened with penalties for non-compliance but here too counci leaders have backed away from any defence of council housing.

Despite having cut their housing staff by 10% as a result of Tory cuts, they have now drafted in extra reinforcements to speed up the disposal of the housing stock.

Once again the failure of Labour councis to act as anything other than local agents for the Tory government is painfully confirmed.

He thrust out a finger in the direction of Heath. "You sock. you left by your bed.

He held up the crumpled black book with its wafer thin pages and a cross on the cover.

"It's too late to lie. We are serialising it in three parts starting tommorow. "Confessions of a Nail Fetishist"

Heath got to his feet and stumbled for the door. "Out of my way you trash", • he yelled. "The gutter's too good for you rats."

Writhing mass

As he closed - the door behind him the man from the Telegraph punched the man from the Mail on the nose. Within seconds the floor was a writhing mass of bodies, fists and feet flying.The, chairperson of the seedings committee watched with satisfaction through the window. She could safely leave the Mail unseeded for another year.