7 November - The housing disaster
I have had no spare time in which to listen to last Wednesday’s Full Council meeting
but apparently there was a Labour Motion on housing. They have issued
a Press Release (PDF) about it.
I think that one of the most significant things to have gone terribly wrong in
Britain during my adult lifetime is the affordability of housing; maybe the failure to
provide an adequate defence force and the decimation of the industry that goes with it runs it a close second.
The young people of today, even those with decent jobs, find it almost
impossible to buy a house of their own. Friends with ‘children’ in their
thirties have their lives blighted by having to accommodate them and subsidise
them because there is no viable alternative.
I bought an almost new house fewer than four years after leaving school. My
first job paid £403 a year from which I had to pay to travel from Hampshire to
London. Fortunately, after two years, I secured a job paying twice as much from which I could save
at least £5 every week. The regular savings record secured an interview at the
long gone Lambeth Building Society and a mortgage, The house cost £3,400.
Youngsters of today have no chance of getting such a start in life and it can
only be the fault of successive governments.