... I agree wholeheartedly with Dennis MacShane's diatribe against the sell-off of council housing (and the failure to build any more) in particular, and Home-Owner-Ism in general, in Sunday's Observer. He concludes thusly:
This is the most selfish generation of homeowners in British history. Until we confront our own selfishness, there will continue to be huge housing shortages, especially for young and less-affluent citizens.
Taking on selfishness, the Thatcherite shibboleth of right-to-buy, and the green lobby is a mammoth task for any party. Will it be too much for Cameron? And will any future Labour leader admit the last government had no social housing policy that was worthy of the name?
Can't add much to that.
UPDATE: Rantin' Rab concurs.
The damage being done to trust
1 hour ago
12 comments:
Nothing wrong with right to buy, AT MARKET PRICES.
Then the council make a profit, build 2 more, though how that would affect private housebuilders i don't know.
I never understood the right to buy at subsidised prices.
I agree with the right to buy. I disagree with the right to buy at a discount.
Right to buy should never have happened.
Many of the social problems in this country today were planted when right to buy started.
I disagree. Many of the social problems were caused by subsidised housing and the dysgenic "welfare" state.
Thatcher was right and wrong at the same time. A nice trick to pull off. Trouble is she was nearly right, and that's dangerous. Partly I think the idea of a 'property owning democracy' was taken solely to mean houses. When in fact 'property' in the most general sense includes equities and other stuff.
Mind you the right to buy nonsense contained a huge amount of deliberate jerrymandering, which is unacceptable. Plus the whole council house sale (at a huge discount) bit was a very tempting target for the fellow travellers in the fractional reserved banks to do a bit more money and profit making.
Overall I have no rooted objection to the sale of council built property, as long as it is at market prices, the council gets to decide how it should spend the money received, that sales do not create ghettos of tenants - and most importantly the tax system is reformed.
If one gets the tenancy of a council house for life, and it is inheritable, there is no simple "market value" - no wonder low prices were charged. But if (I say IF) the coalition takes away the lifetime and inheritable features, there will be no need to ask low prices - indeed, there will probably be no point in selling them at all, unless sitting tenants feel like making high offers for a familiar house they'd like to continue to live in.
Anon, AC1, RR, L, agreed. Selling off at market prices is sort-of-OK.
AC1, please note that RR said "many of " and not "all". In any event, flogging it off at undervalue IS yet more subsidies to housing.
D, exactly! I'm all in favour of 'council houses for life' if this goes together with the obligation to pay market rent for life. Problem solved.
Making less of a splash then Dave 'Boy' Cameron's proposal to make people move out of their council houses as soon as they get a good job (there's an incentive)
was a more interesting idea from Grant Schapps to put all the unlet council property on a computer for
existing tenants to see if they could move anywhere better.If this were put up on the Net for all to see,everybody might realise that there was publicly owned property available in places they could n't
possibly afford to move to as homeowners because owning a house in an area of structural unemployment(low house prices) prevents you moving anywhere there is well-paid work (high house prices).I used to say that moving to work in London was as difficult as moving round S.Africa under the Pass Laws but I have learnt betterg.
I too was amazed to read something
so good from the normally reliably awful Mc Shane.
DBC, why stop there? Why not put ALL council properties on the net and let everybody bid for them? The councils then just keep shuffling people around and building more houses until the marginal return to one extra property = marginal cost of building and maintaining it.
Housing (not just social housing) is in an awful mess in many ways. It's simply appalling that so many impediments lie in the path of private developers, while the social sector equally builds little or nothing. Locally (I live in west London), the residents associations block many quite sensible proposed redevelopments of light industrial or retail property.
We all know that means tested benefits are the biggest jackboot on the face of the poor. If one tries to improve ones lot in life by taking employment, one ends up worse off than coasting on benefits. There is something drastically wrong with this.
I sat down last week and worked out the cost of my partner working 3 days instead of 2 days per week and us paying for childcare. We lose about £6 per day.
For those on housing benefits the marginal tax & withdrawal rates are worse, coupled with the fact that we are earning above minimum wage and they wouldn't be as a general rule of thumb. The system stinks but nobody has the guts to stick a big rod up a TV presenters arse when they start scaremongering about changes and rapid firing questions in a remarkably rude manner in order to try and make the interviewee sound like the devil in human form.
Right to buy I think did cause a lot of problems, there is now insufficient social housing stock to meet demand as the benefit classes continue to breed their way into free housing & "incomes" for life.......
"This is the most selfish generation of homeowners in British history"
Could this be the effect of the "fantasy meme" ?
Real Reform: Are Social Memes the root of Home-Owner-Ism, Landlord-Ism and Wage-Slave-Ism?
And why do we avoid asking why people are so selfish, in the final analysis, rather than blaming our immediately apparent oponents?
Very stupid. Maybe that stupidity is memetic too.
What is the root cause of stupidity ?
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