#simon elmer

This blog post is a diversion from our usual writing on the subject of the social cleansing of Balfron Tower, however, we thought that it was necessary to remind people about Simon Elmer and Geraldine Dening of Architects for Social Housing and how they operate.

ASH have bullied and intimidated housing activists and those challenging gentrification again and again, bullying and attacking residents, particularly those that criticise the appalling way that Simon Elmer treats people; particularly women and homosexuals.

A somewhat delusional Simon Elmer, mocking up stories about himself in the Evening Standard, 2016.

ASH has architectural plans to sell. They are not there to help you save your community, they are there to exploit it, and exploit you. Geraldine Dening, a Cambridge graduate, and Simon Elmer, who has a PhD from UCL do not live in social housing and they never have done. 

They are astroturfing our housing crisis. 

Geraldine’s fashionable brutalist apartment on the Cotton Gardens Estate was bought as an ex-right to buy property. They are the problem, not the solution, which comes as no surprise however, given their elite education. These people just see you as £££ signs in their eyes. They don’t care about you or your community; they care about how much profit they can make from it. They are the same people, educated in the same tradition as the people who are trying to demolish your homes and gentrify your community.

If that doesn’t offend you, then take a read of Chat Up, an Open Letter to my Female Friends by Simon Elmer. Don’t be fooled into thinking this was youthful transgression, this was written in 2016 and only scratches the surface of a very sick individual.

“CHAT UP An Open Letter to my Female Friends

On the weekend I tried to chat up a girl. I was in the pub, and a girl across the way was checking me out, mildly, but enough to exchange a few smiles. So I sent my girlfriend over to chat her up. Rare is the girl who can resist Geraldine’s advances, as some of you will know, but this one did. So I went over myself. She was German, which wasn’t a good start. We chatted. We compared the relative merits of Fassbinder and Herzog. I was drunk and boring, I admit, and it was rubbish. I made light of how crap I was doing, although I thought her coldness toward me a little excessive. No doubt she objected to me sending a proxy. So after a while I retired and my friends and I had a laugh about how badly I did. But – and this is the point of my story- although I had noting invested I this, although, if I had actually been interested in her, I would never have approached her like that, and although the whole thing was a laugh to me if not to her, I steal feel the bat squeak of rejection, the remembrance of what this used to be like, pierce the centre of myself. And I thought, fucking hell, this is what most men still have to go through even to get to talk to a woman, let alone have sex with her! Something very wrong has happened to the relationship between the sexes since the Neolithic. There’s a line on an Apollo 440 track I remember that goes ‘What a man has to go through for a piece of arse in the 21st Century is highly ridiculous’ – or something like that. Is there any wonder there’s so much resentment, misogyny and violence in men’s feelings towards women? I’m not saying it’s women’s fault- no woman is responsible for the violence of which she is the victim- but it’s something whose root causes they share in. I have to be careful here, as in no way do I want to offer an apology for non-consensual violence against women, which is everywhere and increasing these days. But it’s not something that is inherent in male sexuality- although I think it is, and in women’s sexuality too, if only they’d admit it. It also comes- and I can vouch for this myself- from years and years of rejection after rejection, and the desperation and resentment that builds. This is a feeling shared by every man I have ever known, including your boyfriend, brother, and the sons you may one day have- whether they admit it or not. And yet we wonder why the world is hooked on porn and women can’t live up to its gratifications. I’m not saying women are wrong to say no to drunken gits like myself trying to chat them up in pubs.- and God knows, with the little boys and wankers you’ve got to chose (sic) from I have nothing but pity for you. But I can’t help thinking it wasn’t meant to be like this, that there was meant to be some sort of reciprocity of desire between the sexes, instead of the oh-so-fucking-boring thrust and parry that characterises every attempt at seduction. If you want to now what men are like once you remove the barriers women erect around their bodies, look at gay men, who are essentially a bunch of dogs that will fuck anything, anywhere, anyhow. If men weren’t so fucking ugly I’d try it myself. But women have to start taking responsibility for the men they’ve created- because let’s face it, when it comes to heterosexual sex women hold all the cards, make all the rules. Men are just trying to get in the game. Women weren’t meant to stand guard over their cunts like they were some kind of commodity to sell, which is exactly what they have become, as every media image or night down the pub reaffirms. They were meant to have their own desires, instead of being merely the object of ours. That, for me, is what a woman is, rather than these traders in their own flesh who exist before the dark mirror of our stares. It’s one of the reasons I love my ugly girlfriend- about whom no truer words have been written than these, which I commend to the instruction of yourselves and your daughters:

Whores- My most lovely one, in such wise are called the public victims of the debauchery of men, creatures prepared at all times to surrender their persons, whether from temperament or for reward; happy and deserving creatures common opinion assails but whom license crowns and who, far more necessary to the society which they strive to serve than are prudes, forgo the esteem an unjust society denies them. All hail to those in whose eyes this title is an honor! Such are truly lovable women, the only authentic philosophers! As for myself, dear heart, I, who for twelve years have endeavored to merit the laurel, I assure you that if I do not work as a whore, I always play as one. Better still, I love thus to be named when I am fucked: ’tis a vilification that fires my brain.

-Marquis de Sade”

By Simon Elmer, Architects for Social Housing. 2016.

You can find out more about Simon Elmer and Architects for Social Housing here:  

http://colouringinculture.org/blog/ash

Further public comment on Simon Elmer, of ASH, from Graham Jones, much respected and liked East London activist.

Solar Cunt and Pissing Cock. Another insight into the mind of Simon Elmer. From 2016.

Balfron Social Club

By Simon Elmer

When we walked the streets in the cold


FromShoreditch Church to City Hall


Having assembled at midday


On the last day of January


To demand a home to live in


In the city we were born in


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When the London Evening Standard


The night before printed two lines


About the march and two pages 


About some millionaire’s wages


In the West End final issue –


Then it snowed early next morning


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When The Guardian on Friday asked


‘Are you taking part in the march?’ 


If only one in one hundred


Of their 200,000 readers


Answered ‘yes’ – where were the rest


When the rain fell on Saturday


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When you watched us from the café


Cradling your skinny latté


Against the cold that kept you inside


While you read about the issues


In next morning’s Sunday papers


Almost wishing you had been there


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When the Focus E15 Mothers


And the daughters without fathers


Marched through the streets with their banners


Saying ‘This is the beginning


Of the end of the housing crisis’ – 


Though they have no home to live in


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When the coppers under orders


From their paymasters and owners


Stopped us marching through the City


Turned us down Spitalfields shouting


‘Social housing, not social cleansing!’ – 


Past Barclays Bank and Boris Bikes


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When at One Commercial Street 


We saw the poor door for the workers


And the marbled entrance lobby


For the City boys and bankers 


Where Class War held up their banner


Saying ‘All Fucking Wankers!’ – 


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When at Goodman’s Fields the signs said


‘Redefining City Living’


With luxurious apartments


In stunning new developments


Where they filmed us with their smart phones


From behind their plate-glass windows


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When we turned down Prescot Street


And businessmen in business suits 


Stood outside under umbrellas


And doormen in silk top hats 


Stood and held the umbrellas


Safe behind the lines of coppers


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When we stopped at Tower Hill


Underneath the railway bridge


And the band of women drummers


Made the whole street dance together


Chanting ‘Boris out! Boris out!’


Ringing through the iron girders


Where were you when we marched for homes?

 When we crossed on Tower Bridge


Stopped the traffic over the Thames


And the East End met South London


So that our one or two thousand


Grew to three or more thousands


As we turned into City Hall


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When we passed One Tower Bridge


Where new homes are on the market


From one-and-a-half to fifteen million


For the Mayor’s future neighbours


And on their balconies we saw


Our flags and fists raised in defiance


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When we stood in Potters Fields


And saw how few of us there were


Between the shields of riot police


Beneath the dagger of the Shard


And though our banners now were sodden


Still our voices had not fallen


Where were you when we marched for homes?

                           When the speeches were concluded

And the leaflets were distributed

And photographs were being taken

Of the Aylesbury occupation

We turned to the absent thousands

In the flats and homes of London

In buy-to-let private investments 

In property developments

In assured short-term tenancies

In uncertain rental vacancies

In ex-housing associations

In earmarked regenerations

On council housing waiting lists

On sanctioned housing benefits

In homes awaiting demolition

In rent arrears facing eviction

In newly taxed second bedrooms

On the couch of sublet front rooms

In furnished dives and in bedsits

On the street without benefits

In tower blocks they’d occupied

In council flats now privatised

In social housing left to rot

In recently illegalised squats

In empty homes of oligarchs

On sleepless benches after dark

In the doors of West-End hotels

In B&Bs and East-End hostels

In emergency night shelters

On the seats of bus shelters

On the steps of tube stations

On the floors of police stations

In homeless accommodation

In far away relocations – 

And we asked our fellow Londoners