Over a century ago towns and cities all over Britain discovered that good street lighting protected the vunerable and reduced crime. Light protected people and reduced accidents.
Having street lighting is a basic council service that residents pay for through their council tax. Yet this is the service Gateshead Council choses to deny the blighted demolition zone of central Gateshead. In its effort to force residents to sell up and leave, Gateshead Council has pulled the plug on street lighting.
Demolition is not just about the horror of having your home pulled down or seeing your community slowly disappear. It is also about the physcological warfare that local authorities go through in an effort to remove you. By generating fear among remaining residents they hope that people will accept less money to move.
Curiously these are the same tactics used by the Chinese government to prepare for the Olympic Games. Moving residents out to socially cleanse an area. In fact Gateshead Council does so well at terrorising ordinary hard working families it should perhaps offer some of it's staff a secondment to the Beijing city authorities for getting rid of their citizens who want to stay safe in their own homes rather than be demolished.
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