Home is where the heart is?
Sarah Beeny? Lovely. Nick Knowles? Horrendous. The wobbly headed bloke from “Grand (i.e. very expensive) Designs”? Insulting. At least the Beeny and Smashie and Niceys televisual equivalent, the “Knowlester” try and mend and make do. Old wobblers warblings about space, design and form are just insulting for the majority of us who can only dream of “dream” houses. Do you own the place you call home? Are you a property-porn devotee? Designer furniture? Glass walls? Space-age coffee machines? If you are between twenty and thirty years of age, I doubt you do unless your parents bought it for you. House prices, despite recent slowing, remain ridiculous. They lead to double job families where the majority of the second income will be eaten up in mortgage payments even before the childcare bills are discussed. The infamous slum landlord Peter Rachman would face a difficult decision today; to invest in sub-par rental properties or child nurseries. TV pumps out aspirational prop-porn while viewers scratch around for the rent and swop shifts to look after the kids. Thatcher’s assault on council housing stock was one of the greatest Tory-Tricks; the working classes given the opportunity to own the place they resided. And they fell for it in their millions. The subsequent lack of investment in replacement social housing stock has led to today when private rents are increasing and bricks and mortar remain out of reach for the majority of young people. Out of university? Thirty grand in debt? Foot on the housing ladder? Not without a massive leg up.
strainsview 