An open letter to the UK Column News and Mr. Alex Thomson
I am the Russian living in Berlin who recently obtained your reply on his E.mail.
You did kindly reply my last E-mail, therefore I decided to approach you with another strictly German affair.
Perhaps you know that now we in Berlin have a raving campaign of signing the petition calling for the aforementioned referendum.
It is a very well financed and organized campaign. This fact already makes this campaign suspicious. Please see the pictures attached: they have money even for posters with the text in Russian!
I am a member of the council of delegates (Delegiertenrat) of Berliner Mietergemeinschaft e.V. and as such tried to warn everybody in the council, as well as all my acquaintances against this campaign and the proposed referendum. Unfortunately I had zero success. People are simply hypnotized by the misleading word "Enteignung" (expropriation) and plainly refuse to discuss my arguments.
My arguments are:
First, the whole thing will not bring anything good for the tenants. What we should demand, is the mass construction of government-financed council flats, the way it was done not only in the Soviet Block (USSR, GDR etc.) but also in the UK and the FRG after the 2nd world war. This is the only way under the capitalist conditions to press the rents down for all tenants.
On the contrary, this stupid "Enteignung" will merely buy out a couple of big real estate owners. Afterwards the bureaucrats in charge will surely say that rent payments for the "expropriated" flats must be raised to "compensate" the government for this benevolence.
Secondly, the real estate owners in Berlin are definitely eager to be "expropriated", simply because rent payments in Berlin are still more or less strictly regulated by the government, and on the other hand they (real estate owners) salivate now on the profits which they could make buying up big chunks of residential and commercial property in the USA after the "covid" moratorium freezing mortgage payments ends this summer. A large percent of mortgages in the USA is now in arrears, so that the property will definitely be an easy and cheap prey of real estate speculators. The only thing they need now is free cash or at least a letter of intent from the German government promising them to pay a good price for the property to be "expropriated".
I know that there are many Germans watching UK Column News. Therefore please offer this theme for the consideration of the UK Column News viewers a.s.a.p. I hope that this will at last switch the brains of some of the Germans "ON"...
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