I have to fill in forms “for the Brew” for many patients- Sick notes, Disability Living Allowance claims, letters to get grants for new mattresses, letters to get more points to move to a bungalow or a bigger house- you name it.
If you want some images- you could Googlemap Streetview Lenadoon Avenue in Andersonstown, Belfast- a fairly typical street of council houses- some of which you can see have been bought and renovated by their owners. You do get a sense of the fact that most people are houseproud and take care of their homes.
For other examples of Council houses- you could Google Streetview these areas in Belfast:
Flax St/Prospect Park- in the heart of the Ardoyne- you can see some pretty nice new-build Council houses.
Laurelbank (Poleglass)- older houses, you can see where people have bought them and renovated/individualised them.
Both the Ardoyne and Poleglass would be deprived, “bad” areas. Andersonstown is a bit nicer.
And nowhere is anywhere near as horrible as Dolphin’s Barn in Dublin (know it well- Medical school at SJH/ the Coombe).
Here, “the Council” means the Housing Executive, which is a department within the Department of Health, Housing and Social Services (who organise the housing benefits and allocate points), as well as Belfast City Council who will act as landlords of the council properties, and arrange maintainence etc.
In England, “the Council” means the local borough council, for the most part.
OOh- thought of another media council house reference-The Royle Family!
Local government, basically. As opposed to Westminster (national government). There are some subtleties to that, but that’s a reasonable one-sentence description.
My friend John lived in council housing in Oxford. He’d waited a very long time to get there, and the place he lived in sounded very much like the one jjimm described, although it wasn’t a mile from Blackbird Leys so it wasn’t the same place.
Speaking of which…
Blackbird Leys wasn’t nearly as bad as it was made out to be, even during the “bad” days of the 1990’s. Honestly it seemed kind of dull to me. Maybe that’s why some of the anti-social behavior went down, but I never felt particularly scared there. You’re right I think in thinking that some of it was class-based. What I saw there (and the reason I was there, actually) were a lot of people trying to improve their lot in life. I was teaching some computer skills classes and there was a lot of motivation.
