Brune House Washing Day

Thanks, Mike.

Social housing. Bit of a loaded phrase, that. Back in the day it was perfectly normal and respectable for ordinary working people to live in council housing, only the better off could afford to get mortgages and buy their own homes. There were some grumbles about always paying rent and never getting to own anything for the money, but generally people were content with their lot. They decorated, some of them did improvements, although some of them might have been a bit unofficial depending on what the council would or wouldn't allow. The rents were cheap (ish), the tenancies secure and if anything went wrong or fell off the council would send their workmen round (eventually in some cases) to fix it. Generations lived in the same place, tenancies passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, perhaps dreaming of something a bit better but always knowing that what they did have was sound and secure.

Then along came lovely Mrs Thatcher and said 'Wouldn't you like to be part of a property owning democracy? Here look - we'll make the council sell you your home and nice and cheap too, because you've been paying rent for a good few years and that should count for something'

And who could resist a deal like that? Whoosh! in a few years most of the decent stuff had been sold off and what remained was mostly the nasty stuff that nobody wanted to live in, filled with a mixture of those too poor to move and the few unpleasant dregs who manage to make a living out of nothing in particular. Now sensibly this wouldn't have been a problem because the councils would use the money they got from sales to build new houses. Except that the lovely Mrs T, saviour of our nation, wouldn't let them. Almost as if she was deliberately out to destroy our council housing stocks and force everyone to buy or rent on insecure tenancies from dodgy private landlords. Oh and she deregulated private lettings too, so private tenancies were no longer secure and landlords could kick their tenants out after six months. Because obviously, that would stimulate the market and be good for everyone.

So today we have a tiny bit of 'Social Housing' for the dregs who can't afford any better, a massively overinflated housing market where the price of a family home is once again well out of the reach of most families, housing shortages, dodgy private get rich quick landlords, skyrocketing rents and a property price bubble so ridiculously huge that the force of its eventual inevitable bursting will most likely leave our economy looking like Hiroshima after the bomb.

Bitter? Me? What ever gave you that idea?