talking to my NHS nurse friend in Maidenhead re her housing problems-who has never been on the dole in her life - proud East Ender who votes Tory and adored Maggie.

Cannot conceive what I say : that Maggie , despite worshipping nutbags like Milton Friedman- with her determined & fixed ideals about The Market Economy (which has never worked anywhere and is a 'theory')..kicked along the UK into a new type of Socialism that is almost impossible to dismantle.

ie: the ludicrous Right To Buy concept now picked up by a clueless Cameron, sold of valuable and very useful assets at knock down prices finally resulted in a Housing Benefit market that is 10 times what it was 20 years ago and now impossible to dismantle or the housing market will collapse completely.

Or perhaps I am wrong.

##voting UKIP because she says she is "the wrong colour"

I think the "right to buy" was just about the daftest policy ever (along with selling off essential services)
We have lost the rent from these properties, and have to pay huge amounts of money to landlords for unsuitable housing which causes social problems, pushed rent sky high,and has made it impossible for a lot of people to work without huge subsidy.

My simple view as per usual. Right to buy great and gave a chance to increase home ownership.
But like most measures only half done and as always new houses were not purchased to meet council demand for housing. Right to buy big tick. Replacement homes as needed a big tick but did not happen. Instead spend much more on putting families in hotels. Government leaders and government people, in general, all seem to show themselves to be quite loony. They even had proceeds from sales they could of used plus used sites and empty buildings.
Also, one has to laugh at the social aspect of helping less fortunate people to get housing by MT who had a fanatics belief in "user pays" and the free market. This is the same person who herself had some grant money to help her through Oxford. But I accept that MT was straight forward as a person and not underhanded. She was up front. Just a believer rather than a real problem solver. And MT did inherit loony unions and so forth. But a blind faith in the market was a loony belief.
Additional housing can be provided at any time by the government if it so chooses. But parties only look for policies that will get them the vote rather than help the people. They do help but more by accident than planning.

Agree with John; there was a lot right with right to buy and a lot wrong with not coping with the repercussions but that seems to be the problem with the human race - an inability to use complex answers for complex problems.

Cameron has sold of 12,000 properties.

Replaced to date by 1000

do the maths...you taxpayers pay out more in rent subsidies.

hedda wrote:
Cameron has sold of 12,000 properties.

I'll take your figures at face value, not sure if they are right or not.

BUT, if correct, thats 12,000 members of society now - who have a stake in society, and will want to work hard, see their asset grow, and have something to pass onto their children.

You can instantly spot the bought houses on any council estate - they are the ones where the garden in tended and not full of bikes and pshchairs.

We used to be the best in the world at strikes but we've forgotten how to do them these days. The nurses announced they were striking 'with heavy hearts,' and then were shown laughing and joking at the pickets as if they were at a party. Absolute amateurs!

Kenneth Mintcake wrote:
We used to be the best in the world at strikes but we've forgotten how to do them these days.


... then we woke up, and realised the Unions had driven ALL the jobs abroad !

In The Know (as always) wrote:
hedda wrote:
Cameron has sold of 12,000 properties.

I'll take your figures at face value, not sure if they are right or not.

BUT, if correct, thats 12,000 members of society now - who have a stake in society, and will want to work hard, see their asset grow, and have something to pass onto their children.

You can instantly spot the bought houses on any council estate - they are the ones where the garden in tended and not full of bikes and pshchairs.

yes poverty is easily spotted.

and yes 12000 members of society- maybe far more (families) now have a"stake in society" courtesy of a socialist program.

Although I still marvel at your ability to know the basic details of every Brit subject.

It is of course my money (and others) who caused those people to have that "stake", Bloody Tories - free and easy with my cash.

In The Know (as always) wrote:
hedda wrote:
Cameron has sold of 12,000 properties.

I'll take your figures at face value, not sure if they are right or not.

BUT, if correct, thats 12,000 members of society now - who have a stake in society, and will want to work hard, see their asset grow, and have something to pass onto their children.

You can instantly spot the bought houses on any council estate - they are the ones where the garden in tended and not full of bikes and pshchairs.


If the housing benefit bonanza hadn't pushed the price of houses up they might have been able to afford a house in an area of their choice in the style they wanted like everybody else.

honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
If the housing benefit bonanza hadn't pushed the price of houses up they might have been able to afford a house in an area of their choice in the style they wanted like everybody else.


... esp if they got a job !

In The Know (as always) wrote:
honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
If the housing benefit bonanza hadn't pushed the price of houses up they might have been able to afford a house in an area of their choice in the style they wanted like everybody else.


... esp if they got a job !


More incentive to.

In The Know (as always) wrote:
Kenneth Mintcake wrote:
We used to be the best in the world at strikes but we've forgotten how to do them these days.


... then we woke up, and realised the Unions had driven ALL the jobs abroad !

no,manufacturers drove jobs abroad. It's the nature of business to go where labour is cheap and it's as cheap as chips in (Communist) China.

Of course huge corporations like WalMart in the USA are similar and pay poverty wages - so poor most employees need a second job and now getting to need a third.

ITK again shows he doesn't even understand Capitalism let alone Socialism (which he claims has failed despite Russia / China/Vietnam surviving superbly).

The real problem with cheap labour- unions have created the Middle Class by elevating huge swathes of the poor but now comes the crunch as the Market Economy Voodoo economists (beloved of Maggie & Reagan) have effectively dismantled the Middle Class.

It's why 2 US billionaires, right wing Warren Buffet and lefty George Soros see a coming collapse based solely on the destruction of the Middle Class (and predicted by me when i was 10 in 1902 or thereabouts).

Just as Rome collapsed because of Slave Labour (no unions to keep wages high)

hedda wrote:

no,manufacturers drove jobs abroad.

Oh ... it was the manufacturers that made us the sick man of Europe was it ?
Not all those British Leyland workers (always on strike) but buying Datsun cars ?

when i was 10 in 1902 or thereabouts

A dimentia cure is long overdue !!!!