From The Guardian, spotted by Drewster at HPC:
Responding to Margaret Hodge's wailing about the proposed cap on Housing Benefit...
Cameron replied: "Find me a street in your constituency and let's go down it together and let's ask people earning £20,000, £25,000, £30,000, whether they are happy to be paying towards people whose rent bills are £30,000, £40,000, £50,000 living in central London.
"I think that is more likely, frankly, to lead to social unrest when people find out how much money they're paying in taxes for people to live in houses they couldn't dream of living in themselves." Cameron said housing benefit had risen by 50% in the last five years. "Everyone accepts it's out of control and you've got to take some steps to deal with it," he said.
"We have been chasing ourselves round in a circuit of increased housing benefit, increased costs and all the while not building very many houses. We have had big capital allocations into housing for the last decade, but it has pushed up the price of land – anyone who owns a bit of land outside one of the towns we represent has done very well, but we seem not have built many houses."
Awesome! He actually remembered something from the 'economics' bit of his university degree! The Home-Owner-Ist élite will have to have a quiet-but-very-stern word with him about this.
Full version on Hansard
Elevate their cause?
4 hours ago
10 comments:
will this damascene(?) moment lead to more housing being built?
R, no, of course not.
I actually think that Cam and Os "get" this issue. Boris and Pickles probably do not.
Unfortunately, he then followed this up by demanding the resignation of an adviser who had inadvertantly reminded all the voters that his party are supposed to be conservatives..
BE, Boris ain't so bad. He did say that he'd be prepared to press ahead with Crossrail even if central government subsidies were cut, because he'd make up the difference with a precept on Business Rates. The Morbidly Obese one can do a Mama Cass AFAIAC.
JM, d'you mean Lord Young? He's the Robin Hood of 'hard pressed homeowners' who celebrated the policy of robbing from the savers to subsidise the borrowers! Political gold, economic shite.
If Boris was sensible, he would update the London Plan to scrap or substantially reduce the tax on housing development and let rip with new high rise housing.
BE, I tend to take Boris ideas about building more housing at face value (there again, he might say one thing to get votes but do nothing to keep the NIMBYs happy, I dunno), but which 'tax'?
D'you mean 'affordable housing' nonsense (which makes about half of schemes economically unviable), CIS scheme, planning bureaucracy, s106 agreements, what?
"that his party are supposed to be conservatives.."
Surely not! Expecting the Conservatives to be conservative is like expecting the Catholic Church to be catholic (or the Liberal Democrats to be liberal democrats!).
Don't forget Cameron made an off the cuff remark about second homes being "not necessarily a splendid investment for the whole community"
back in May.
You have to fear for his safety.
I think the mind control drugs wear off from time to time.
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