Housing cap: how many to move out of H&F?

Boris Johnson's claim that the Government are risking "Kosovo style cleansing" of the poor from inner city areas has gone down like a cup of cold sick with Tory High Command in Downing Street, and doubtless with their chief local government radicals at Hammersmith Town Hall.

This is just an observation of fireworks to come, but you have here in Hammersmith & Fulham an inner city borough with poorer people living cheek by jowl with some very rich people indeed. Witness the difference between the good burghers of Hammersmith, led by a Barrister and enraged by the propsect of King Street being redeveloped, alongside the much more working class traders of Shepherd's Bush Market also ranged against our Council.

It's a little known fact that this argument first erupted when the little known shadow Minister Chris Bryant used the term "cleanisng" in parliament. But he wasn't the first to use it. No, that honour falls to our own Andy Slaughter MP who has been using it to describe our Council's determination to 'redevelop' large housing estates across the borough - from Queen Caroline to West Kensington - much to their chagrin.

SO expect the sort of arguments you've been seeing at a national level in the last 24 hours to persist at local level for years to come.It will decide the future look and feel of our borough - and how many and what sort of us still live here in a few years time. In the meantime here's the BBC's report of yesterday's events: