How is he not doing as he does?

He is living in a council house, the same house he moved into 30 years ago. He is a champion of council housing, he could have bought his council house for a pittance but chose instead to continue paying rent to the council.

How is that hypocritical?

Do you have the evidence that Crow has said that people who earn a decent whack should move out of their council house?

If not, I suggest you go and learn what hypocrisy actually means.

Now these unions would be the CBI, the BMA, the NFU, The Law Society, The Freight Transport Association, The Bankers Association etc., some of which are closed shops which means you can't work unless you are a member.

They are what you are talking about as well when you go into condemning union mode.

Oh and by the way

WHICH ECONOMY?

OK, open question, should Social Housing be based on NEED?

Its always been based on need.

Where we differ is that social housing, council housing, housing association housing, whatever you wish to call it, should not be regarded as charity, as something that people need in times of hardship as a stop-gap measure until they can "better themselves" and move on to mortgages or more expensive private lets.

Nor should we lose sight of the fact that renting is a lifestyle choice and not a shameful one, indeed its the norm in mainland Europe and given that fact the landlord/authority/manager should not have the sanction of re-housing families or individuals just because a bedroom tick box isn't filled - sure you may wish to review the case every five or ten years, you may wish to interview the tenant and ask if they are happy living in a 3 bed house and paying a 3 bed rent now that their children have flown the nest, but there should be no sanction to move the tenant simply because an accountant decrees it so as long as the tenant is paying the going rate.

I suspect that is not in line with what you would desire/practice now.

as we've never met, I will forgive your assumptions as to my opinion.

Social Housing IS charity (look at the deeds of incorporation for any provider, they are charitable) People who do not NEED a 3 bedroom home should not be preventing people that do NEED a 3 bedroom home from having one. Bob Crow does not NEED Social Housing (he needs a bullet between the eyes, admittedly)

You would first have to define "need"

There is an argument that there is strong need to reduce the amount paid out in housing benefit and that could be done by increasing the supply of houses to be rented at truly affordable rates, as opposed to a percentage of the prevailing rents. The casualties of such a system would probably be buy to let and other private sector landlords but hey, investments can go down as well as up. So tough titty.

You have a very narrow definition of "charity", the vast majority of private schools enjoy charitable trust status, only a fool would call them charities.

Your hatred of Bob Crow is well known already but please don't allow your opinion of the man cloud the argument on extending council housing.

I look forward to your support for trades unions campaigning for (up to and including industrial action) wages that allow their members to forego the "charity" of being able to keep a roof over their heads, then, and the chance to take on that liberating burden of a mortgage.

You might wish to start with Cde Crow.

The problem with some who play this sort of line is a total lack of consistency.

It's all well and good saying that having a council house is an act of "charity", but given the cost of housing these days, thanks to the joys of The Market, a great many people need that "charity" or they will not have a roof over their heads. This would not actually be good for anyone – or for the national economy as a whole.

Yet many of those who, frankly, wet their knickers over home ownership, and would claim that council houses etc are "charity" would also scream about 'The Market' and not being beastly to employers if the question of levels of pay that allowed anyone to get a sensible mortgage on an averagely-priced property was to be raised.

Some people are so wedded to an idea – albeit very vague – of 'The Market', together with an abject terror of 'The State', that they appear incapable of joined-up thinking.

And in the meantime, we get the ideological cobblers that actually being able to have a roof over your head is an act of "charity".

On only a slight aside, why do some of the same people that would harp on about how 'socialism/communism has failed' ever think that capitalism hadn't? Why, in spite of all the historic evidence, do some people simply keep on about: 'well, we just need more open markets and more trickle down – because then it will trickle down, even though it never, ever has done before. But it will this time. Honest'?

Are they dishonest? Or are they simply like a secular form of religious believer?

usual left wing dogma of the Sin Bin

So is that an inability to answer the points/questions raised or an unwillingness to try?

My grandparents wouldn't have called it charity, in fact they would have balked at the suggestion that they should accept charity in the form of a property for their young family. In fact I would suggest they paid more in rent for their "charitable" property than that of the house they moved from, pro rata.

There's a couple of errors there.

My local council is not a charitable trust.

You used the word "home" in the sentence above, I believe that what you are talking about is a "house" or "dwelling".


But ultimately we come back to the difference of opinion that I eluded to in my response, by your own admission you've only been working as a housing officer since 1998 and you can therefore be forgiven for having no knowledge of the original purpose for council housing, its a business to you, a matter of logistics and accountancy with little regard to the client but full regard to ticking boxes - quite sad really.

Would you say the average standard of living is higher or lower than it was at the turn of the 20th century - if you believe it is higher then how has that happened? Is that not a tangible example of the trickle down effect?

The market in housing has stalled because an outside factor has disrupted it i.e. the lack of available money. If the usual people who could get mortgages yesteryear could get mortgages now then more new affordable houses would be being built - the fact that nobody seems inclined to lend money right now then why would anyone build houses they cannot sell?