Your story is very familiar for its very much like the place, an ex-pit village, that my wife grew up in, the village itself was virtually 100% a council estate but depending on the economy most family's breadwinner were IN work, the wifes father was never out of work for the whole of his life and did not claim any benefits in order to raise six children other than child benefit, he was a proud man and most of the other tenants were too, being "on the dole" for longer than "they" considered necessary was looked on as being shameful, most of the tenants belonged to one of two social clubs in the village and they'd talk about the few individuals who never seemed to work - THATS what social networks used to be like.

Of course their area was very much a Labour socialist area and local councillors were known (because you drank with them in the club) so when in the early 1990s the council adopted a points scoring system for allocating houses which seemed to be biased towards out of work single young people, some of whom brought drug problems onto the estate, they were able to lobby their councillor by simply bagging him in the bar every night until the policy was changed, when the wifes parents had passed away and they gave up the house the policy then was to put it up for bids and a young family ended up "winning" it at a rent that was almost ten times the amount that my mother-in-law had been paying - but still only around £350 a month for a 3 bed semi detached (5 years ago), that family would regard that as a bargain compared to what they would have to pay to a private landlord and THAT is what council housing and the vehement opposition towards it is all about.

One has to wonder what some people really think is/was wrong with this.

I was the council tenant of a 3 bedroom house from age eighteen when my old lady died.
My older brother had already flitted by then and my younger sister went upto Scotland to live with an aunt.
So I was ensconced in the property on my lonesome and they couldn't get me out.
Me being an honourable chap though I exchanged into my mates two bed flat across the road as he had just got wed and had a couple of young sprogs.
Spent a good bit of time away although I kept the tenancy on (me bad ).
Smashing estate as a kid growing up on but oh how it changed after the children of Thatchers legacy started reaching adulthood from the 90's onwards.

When I was made homeless in 1997 after splitting with a partner, I was earning £7,500 pa. I applied (well, filled out the forms at least) for a council house in conjunction with sitting down with a mortgage adviser trying to work out if I could afford a mortgage. I went down the mortgage route only because I could only just afford it as I had no loans and no credit card debt but I was offered a small council property which I declined.

18 months after owning my own home, virtually overnight, I ended up in a wheelchair unable to work. With the help of my parents who would buy me food and IS, IB and DLA I managed until the end of 1999 I went into remission. I came off benefits and went back to work, albeit temping until I found a full time job some time later. I met Mr HWS at work and he moved into my house and life went on. I came out of remission and my disease took hold again, but I kept on working until I could no longer get out of bed in a morning let alone do a full days work. That was 2004 and until 2007 my disease improved by taking new drugs for a few months then the drugs would stop working (which is very common for these type of drugs ) and I'd be back to square one again. In 2005, to cut a long story short, my disease stopped me from going up my stairs (2 up, 2 down very small and steep stairs so no room for a stair lift) pretty much as it did in the beginning but I was married by this point, so we moved into a bungalow which I am still in today and which I am grateful for after 2 hip replacements, one knee replacement and a foot fusion later the bungalow has helped me no end.

If I did Standees way;

1997 Homeless so would qualify for a council property
1998 Back on my feet, leave council property, buy own property
1998 Contracted RA, in wheelchair, sell house as would qualify for special needs housing.
1999 Disease in remission, leave special needs housing, buy own property.
2000-2004 Disease fluctuating meaning sometimes housing meets needs, sometimes not.
2004 Gave up work for 2nd time, property no longer meets needs, sell own property, qualify for special needs housing.
2005-present - Mr HWS earning more than minimum wage - have to leave council property, buy own property.
2009 - 2010 Various joint replacements all at once, can't do stairs - sell own property, qualify for special needs housing.

Does he not realise how ridiculous this is, not to mention stressful? Peoples needs change at various intervals during their life. I cannot think what it must be like to yoyo in and out of social housing like Standee is suggesting, but probably true to style he will say he is not talking about people like me.

Coddy, my grandparents moved onto LHE in around 1955. Thats what those estates were built for, like you say, not because people had a need, but to build a community, a place that you never had to leave because everything from social (pubs, libraries), shops, houses, schools and recreation were all together within one community. They were happy renting just like they had done since the were married in 1945. We used to say that they could have bought their whole block of houses 10 times over with the rent they paid over the years.

But ''there is no such thing as society.''
She was wrong. She'd have known that if she'd have grown up on my council estate, and I suspect, many others.
They were our communities, good and bad.
People helped others, that's the way it was.

No food banks that I can remember back then though!

More importantly they would tell you that they had no desire at all to purchase their property.

It was a mindset just like my in-laws, my Father in law had the right to buy and could have had his 3 bed semi detached (larger than the house I'm living in right now) for £15k but refused, his youngest son offered to buy it for him as he was in the RAF at the time and had sackfulls of spare cash every month, but his father wouldn't let him - the principal of renting for life was an honorable one and my father in law held the opinion that it wasn't his house to buy.

THAT is socialism at its best.

I'm old enough to remember when councils built houses with the profit from their rents, repaired stuff when needed, sold off a small proportion of the stock and were allowed invest in their estate. Now the profit goes towards paying housing professionals...

Much of the post-war housing was built on what was agricultural land, bought for a song. The local councils then granted themselves planning permission. There is absolutely no reason why a similar exercise couldn't be undertaken today. Similarly any banked land that has not been developed should be sequestered by the state and used for council house building. Couple that with the thousands of hectares of unused land currently owned by national and local government and there really is no shortage of availabl land, suitable for building truly affordable, mixed-use housing. The money to fund the building costs would be a doddle to raise, in fact given the current base rates, it would be criminal not to be raising capital through the sale of government bonds.

The money received in rents would cover the payments required on 30 year bonds, the savings on tax credits and housing benefit would also do more to relieve the exchequer that any austerity measures that Iain Duncan Smith could dream up. No matter how parlous the politicians would have you believe the UK's finances, they are in far better state than they were post-WW2.

The only thing missing is political will and unfortunately no party seems to have that

"It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour" - Margaret Thatcher

Shame she only put into action the first half of that statement.

Just as well she had somebody to look after her when she was in that rocking chair p!ssing her pants.

The problem with the mindset of looking after yourself is that you never quite get around to the second part, the looking after others bit.

HOUSING dipstick, we are discussing HOUSING.

Now what are your views (as in your personal views and not wiki soundbites) on the matter in debate?

Oh my apologies I thought we had moved on to discussing THATCHER, when the poster above regurgitated that THATCHER quote which is always taken out of context. But yes you didn't pick up on that....no....my apologies.

Bob Crow living in a council house?

Well it is obvious. He is representative of the hypocritical 'do as I say and not as I do' attitude which pervades the upper echelons of trade unions.