Monday 6 January 2014

Joined up government

From The Evening Standard:

A massive £12 billion of welfare cuts are needed in the two years after the 2015 general election, George Osborne announced today…

People living in council houses and earning more than £60,000 should be told to find homes in the private sector, he also suggested.


I wonder how long it will take them to update the DCLG's Right To Buy guidance to make it absolutely crystal clear that council tenants earning more than £60,000 won't be eligible for the tasty £75,000 or £100,000 discounts.

5 comments:

Bayard said...

"The money raised through extra sales is now going straight towards building new affordable homes for rent."

Well that's an improvement on the Thatcher "you can spend it on anything but housing" line. If it's true, that is.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, it's not true, is it? Even if it were, by giving £100k discounts they are minimising the pot left to spend on council housing.

But it's bollocks anyway. Council housing is one of the few things where the government can make an actual easy profit, it finances itself. There is no need to make a loss on existing stock in order to finance increase in new stock.

I also refer you to this from the ES:

“The bad news is: there’s still a long way to go. We’re borrowing around £100 billion a year and paying half that money a year in interest just to service our debts.

“We’ve got to make more cuts — £17 billion this coming year, £20 billion next year. And over £25 billion further across the two years after. That’s more than £60 billion in total.”


Yes, that's £60 billion over four years, which is not going to make much of a dent in the £400 billion overspend he started with.

Some sources say that the £100 billion deficit is a lie anyway, it's closer to £200 billion.

Bayard said...

"I wonder how long it will take them to update the DCLG's Right To Buy guidance to make it absolutely crystal clear that council tenants earning more than £60,000 won't be eligible for the tasty £75,000 or £100,000 discounts."

I doubt they will do any such thing. The quickest way to get rid of rich council tenants is to sell them their home at a discount, problem solved. However, I suspect Gideon has a point: anyone who can afford to buy their council house and hasn't done so by now, must be hanging on out of principle, in which case they are a nasty left-winger and deserve to be thrown onto the street so that the home can be handed to someone who has the right sort of ideas and wants to buy it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, for reasons best know to themselves, they are targetting Bob Crow.

They are completely changing the rules just to fuck over one guy who sticks up two fingers at the Home-Owner-Ists and refuses to either move out or to buy.

Bayard said...

Didn't the previous government pass a law simply to get of rid of one guy who was protesting outside the HOC? When it comes to pettiness, pols are down there with the pettiest.