Seems I picked a good time to upgrade my Twitter to Journotwit! Being able to organize searches more effectively by subject has allowed me to enjoy a veritable torrent of ‘nasty’, ‘Thatcherite’, and ‘back to the 80s’ tweets today. It seems that David Cameron’s comments on council housing at a Cameron Direct meeting yesterday have whipped up a particularly virulent storm with the left-wing Tweeters. Reading some of the comments, you’d be mistaken for thinking that the Cabinet are spending their recess running up and down the country, busting in the doors and kicking out the disadvantaged. Oh please…
I fully understand that the concept of a ‘home’ can be a very emotive one, and Government comment on it raises the same hackles as, say, over the BBC or NHS. However, when we find ourselves in a situation where there is not enough affordable housing in this country, but where the economy does not allow us to build more, surely it is a bit much to greet the mention of a potential policy with quite such a howl of horror?
The idea that someone can be granted a Council house ‘for life’ is problematic. Surely it is better to take a look at how an individual’s personal circumstances change over time, and then assess whether they still require the same level of assistance? This is, after all, what happens in terms of employment, incapacity and other housing benefits. Why should council housing be treated any differently?
The Guardian has a story which takes Cameron’s comments in the context of plans for a national house-swap scheme outlined by Housing Minister Grant Shapps today. There are currently 250,000 people in this country living in houses that are too small for their families, and 400,000 living in houses that are too big. This is not good enough, and the Government is failing the quarter of a million people who do not have sufficient room to live.
According to Paul Waugh, sources say that Cameron’s answer was merely an answer to an ‘emotive’ question at the Cameron Direct event; a comment on the benefits of such an idea rather than ‘a set-in-stone policy’. Personally, I hope that this mean that we can finally have a reasoned debate about the state of Council housing in this country and, even better, find a sensible way to move forward with managing it better.
The way the media are going about this, "sensible" and "reasoned" are not terms applicable to this debate, sadly.
ReplyDeleteI posted similar views but with a snarkier flavour on this, last night. And then got into various discussions with (mostly Labour) people on twitter, none of which could be described as reasoned or sensible. I pretty much summed up with my final tweet to one of them, which says "We seem to have radically different views on social housing. I see it as a safety net. You see it as gifts for the poor." There really is no reasoning with a mindset that says a council house is a hosue for life. It doesn't matter how much you point out that it's wrong, even with the added weight of actually *being* a social housing tenant. Infuriating!
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