Housing – A Bolshevik Solution From A Tory?

HOUSING MINISTER Grant Shapps has suggested that the elderly down size their homes to allow younger families to move into them as tenants. The local authorities would play the role of agent by maintaining the properties at affordable prices; and the rent accrued from the new tenants would be handed over to the owner; who is presumably caged up somewhere in a one- up one-down, thought better suited to their requirements.

                I do not know whether Mr Shapps is a Liberal Democrat (LD) member of the coalition, or a Tory – but he certainly fits the job description of a Liberal-Democrat: and if he is a LD, his partners in coalition should have taken action to prevent such kite-flying from ever taking place.

                The Coalition’s two leaders are very wealthy people, both of whom must subscribe to private ownership. I know the Tories did for centuries; but with this lot one can never tell, as they barely scrape the surface  of what conservatism has meant historically.

                With private ownership, it is the purchaser of the property that owns it. They are the sole owners, and there is no law that can deny them that ownership - compulsory purchase of property (in the modern age) being the sole, and limited exception.

                Private ownership and its underwriting in law, is the basis of the free society. If this is challenged in any way by the state, then capitalism is doomed and so is a free nation, and all that this entails regarding free speech, free press, and free anything else.

               

MR SHAPPS’ big idea will hopefully remain just that; an example of an ill-coordinated action of neurons in the brain put down to an enthusiasm for political elevation. His big idea therefore needs to be put once and for all to bed.

                Tories, at one time, would have balked at the very concept of social engineering; being as it was, part of their argument against an overpowering state. Yet Mr Shapps (I have since been told, he is indeed a Tory) blithely proposes such a remedy for our future overpopulated island.

                Such overpopulation, by the way, will  in no small measure be due to the generous influx of immigration made possible by the last government. Without such an influx our elderly would not be asked to make way for younger families to live in their properties.

                Each and every one of us make a purchase on a daily basis; but to suggest we forfeit these purchases by giving them to someone younger than ourselves (I am by the way 61 years old) is ludicrous. But the same principle applies. Whether it is a kilo of apples from Sainsbury’s or a property that has been bought and paid for.

                It is a disgraceful suggestion to even propose that properties, belonging to hard working widows and widowers , that have scrimped and saved to pay off a mortgage,  should now be asked to  vacate their properties in order to help provide accommodation for  someone younger.

                Mr Shapps’ proposal is a none starter, and the sooner he disbands this wretched piece of social engineering the better. A piece of  social engineering, which, by its very nature, is anti-conservative, if such a description still means anything to him.

                After the Russian revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks set about populating any home larger than a two-up two-down, with the proletariat. But at least they allowed the once wealthy owners to remain living (be it in a single room) in the properties. In an act of class vindictiveness one comes to expect from  socialists, the communists were determined to drag everyone down to the same level, with the exception of commissars and party apparatchiks who retreated to their dachas in country at weekends.

                Mr Shapps’ ill-considered suggestion bares parallels to post-revolutionary Russia. If not in delivery, then at least in the spirit of what the Bolsheviks did. For, as with the UK today, the new Soviet union was faced with a billeting problem, and with typical ruthlessness set about implementing their ‘solution’.   

I CAN NOW SEE A TIME WHEN home ownership will mean nothing of the kind; and that time  will begin if and when Mr Shapps’ idea reaches fruition. If the elderly are ‘invited’ or ‘encouraged’ to volunteer for the abandonment of their homes, then what is the incentive to own one in the future? What will the homeowners children, who hope to inherit such properties make of Mr Shapps’ big idea for managing the increase in the nation’s population, that his profession, rather than the biological impulses of the nation’s people, will be responsible for creating?

                We need hundreds of thousands of new homes, above and beyond those currently under construction; appealing to homeowners to downsize is not only anti-conservative, but in terms of the nation’s requirements, not worth the candle. So think again minister – at least you should soon be proficient in kite flying, if little else.