Thanet Council have introduced a new axe to threaten it's tenants with. The "demoted tenancy" allows the council to "...place residents guilty of anti-social behaviour on probabtion for a year." (source: Your Say Winter 2006 No 30.)

What worries me is the test of guilt.

In the past a formal complaint was all that was required to establish guilt.

It seems that if you rent from the council (as I do) that the rule is guilt by acusation and it is up to you to prove yourself innocent. Something that is almost impossible in many cases.

For example when the work that was being done to my block of flats was being carried out I maintained that unsafe activities and substandard work was going on (the same issue of "your say" insultingly claims that the work won an award but fails to say who issued the award).

My reward for speaking up was being told by council works that I had no idea what I was talking about and being ignored by councillers. I turned to blogging to make my views known and that won me the strongly denied ride in an ambalance thanks to the builders.

Strangly the builders suddenly remembered that I had broken all sorts of rules and had complained while I was at the QEQM that I had climbed on the scafhold (that I claimed was unsafe) and the council wrote to tell me I was on my last warning.

I am still fighting to clear my name blackened by the very builders who threatened to murder my family.