The Autumn Statement, a little rant.
29 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in British Politics Tags: autumn statement, economy, george osborne
So I’m currently sat watching the Autumn Statement and I’m so infuriated I felt the strong need to vent.
George just announced the resurrection of the Thatcherite love-child policy, Right to Buy. Now, the fact that this could well be viewed as the systematic destruction of the welfare state aside, this is just frankly stupid.
One of the reasons the world descended into financial melt down was the sub-prime mortgage drama in the United States. People were buying houses they could not afford. The same thing happened in this country in the early nineties when people’s houses were routinely repossessed.
The point of council housing is to provide low-cost housing for people who are unable to afford to seek housing in the private sector, and for many people, it’s very valuable and has been for a long time.
There seems to be a culture in the Tory Party that preaches that you are nothing if you don’t own property, but why should it be the be all and end all of life? On the continent there is no such obsession, and people’s private debt is substantially lower. What this government should be doing is seeing that people simply cannot afford to buy houses, and the need for rental housing is soaring, why is the government not meeting that demand by building more social housing?
This would still provide much-needed jobs for an economy that is at best flat lining and at worst slipping down the slope of double dip recession.
Social housing is not shameful, which I believe this government is implying, and provides a life line for many. This government should not be selling the existing stock off and making people feel lesser for living in rented social housing. Rather they should take the positive step of providing jobs and desperately needed rental social housing.
This post is a little ranty, and I intend to do more research and come back with some info and stats as I believe this is a really important point.
