Day: January 25, 2016

    Today Brandon Lewis MP announced £5m in government funding to combat the scourge of rogue landlords. Councils are in desperate need of additional funding to help them fix the problems associated with rogue landlords and there’s no doubt that this public money be put to good use. They will be better able to target notorious ‘beds in sheds’, cramped hellholes rented out for extortionate sums often to the most vulnerable in society.Alongside these extreme examples, the money will also be used to increase property inspections, carry out more raids, initiate more enforcement actions and (hopefully!) bring about more prosecutions. This is all, of course, tremendously positive. However, a back-of-an-envelope calculation on how this works makes this much less of a cause for celebr...

    A Swiss cleaning company employed by a McDonald’s franchisee in Geneva was caught recently having allegedly tricked several refugees into working as cleaners without pay for months at a time. According to The Local, several refugee cleaners said the company, which is a subsidiary of the Swiss cleaning firm Top Clean, told them that they could acquire residency permits for their workers in exchange for labour. The workers never got paid, but they thought maybe that was normal, and that they would get paid when they got their visas. They allegedly never got their visas either. “At first I thought it was normal to work for free in Switzerland to get a residency permit. My friends at the refugee home also did it,” said a Sudanese refugee named Yusef, who says he cleaned McDona...

    Tory peer Cecil Parkinson Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Cecil Parkinson has died after a long battle with cancer, his family have said. The Tory peer, who served in several roles in Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s, was 84. A family spokesman said: "Cecil passed away on January 22 after a long battle with cancer. We shall miss him enormously. As a family, we should like to pay tribute to him as a beloved husband to Ann and brother to Norma, and a supportive and loving father to Mary, Emma and Joanna and grandfather to their children. We also salute his extraordinary commitment to British public life as a member of parliament, cabinet minister and peer - together with a distinguished career in business. The Conservative grandee, whose full title was L...