‘Living Rent’ and other UK stories

A Tory think tank in Britain is proposing their government set up building 75,000 houses per year for the low-paid, with them paying a ‘Living Rent’.  A Living Rent would be no more than 1/3 the average low wage in the area.

The UK have a less-well publicised and less-extreme housing shortage than Auckland, but that’s a massive house building project, and a serious attempt at making housing affordable.  Whether Theresa May and her government follow up on it (they’re snowed under by Brexit, even before they look for excuses to avoid it), that’s a Tory think tank proposing it.

They can see the problems of the massive hole of Accommodation Allowances subsidising landlords and not creating needed housing.  Even the right-wing thinkers can see the need for the state to get involved with building enough houses and enough of the right size for normal people (private developers build big houses for the rich who can pay).  They propose giving people the right-to-buy (that popular Thatcher policy) after 2 years renting the houses, but importantly they see that you’d need to build more houses to replace them.

Incidentally the last year the UK built the 250,000 new homes it needs each year was 1977-78, with councils building 44% of new homes then – just before Thatcher started selling off all the council houses… and not replacing them.

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For a bit of amusement, here’s a glossary of contemporary UK politics, including the ‘hardworking families’ featured in the above report (it’s like bingo with politician’s speeches…)

Definitions start at Austerity (n) The price you have to pay for the mistakes that others, typically politicians and bankers, have made and aren’t going to pay for themselves. A catch-all term that includes being completely broke even if you’ve got a job (see Hardworking families) and hanging out at food banks if you’re out of work (see Scroungers).

Proceed through Corbynista (n) A neologism first coined in 2015 that now comes in two distinct usages:
– A member of the Labour party who has seen the true path of socialism and will follow Jeremy Corbyn even unto a defeat at the 2020 general election because it is far better to have 75 of the right kind of MPs than 326 who might be able to form a government (cf Blairite)
– A member of the Labour party who is completely deluded and will follow Jeremy Corbyn even unto a defeat at the 2020 general election because it is far better to have 75 of the right kind of MPs than 326 who might be able to form a government (cf Blairite).

to Long-term economic plan (ph) Term invented by David Cameron’s government to give the impression that it knew what it was doing. To be differentiated from the short-term economic plan, which meant “making it up as we go along and hoping for the best”. The long-term economic plan has now officially been abandoned since the EU referendum to be replaced by Brexit means Brexit.

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The Lib Dem leader/deputy PM in the recent coalition government in the UK, Nick Clegg, has come out with a book, with extracts in the The Guardian.  In accompanying interviews he details how the Tory finance minister casually cut the benefits of the poorest people in society because he believed taking the austerity axe to welfare would boost Conservative popularity; and one of the Tory top 2 said: ‘I don’t understand why you keep going on about the need for more social housing – it just creates Labour voters.’

The lack of consideration for society’s most vulnerable in the pursuit of where focus groups of right-leaning swing voters take them is astounding.  And it’s worth remembering how well Cameron & Key got on, and were keen to swap tips.  It’s worth a read to get an insight into how a modern anglo right-wing government thinks.

And our lot only have Peter Dunne to slow them down…  (UK Tories no longer have anyone to slow them down… which is why they’re now facing the consequences of Brexit…)