PowerSwitch

Young first-time buyers in England could buy a house at 20% below the market rate if the Conservatives are re-elected, David Cameron has pledged.

The Tory leader said the party would build 100,000 new homes reserved for those under 40 buying their first home.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29387866

I'm sure this'll keep the whole debt = growth wagon rolling for another couple of months. Won't it?

Some building regulations - like the zero carbon homes standard - would also not apply to the new units.

Disaster!

A master-stroke. A new generation of tory voters and wage-slaves in one easy move.

can we just admit prices are too high, and its supposed to discourage people starting more families.. population will fall and some decades in the future everything will be back in balance.

ceti331 wrote:can we just admit prices are too high, and its supposed to discourage people starting more families.. population will fall and some decades in the future everything will be back in balance.

Prices aren't too high in order to discourage people from starting families. It's far more prosaic and mundane than that. They are too high because our elites have built their wealth on the back of our indebtedness and so we cannot be allowed to default for that would mean our indebtedness would cease, we would be free and they would lose their wealth and power. All of the other social consequences are secondary, at least as far as they are concerned. For us the people, of course, those secondary social consequences are of primary importance. However, I would wager that as far as our elites are concerned, the great unwashed can all just go back to living in multi family/multi generational slum dwellings and be grateful for it.

Funnily enough I overheard some passersby on the footpath past the Plot today talking about precisely that. Included the sentence: "I'd love to have 2 (was already pushing one along in a pram) but our place just isn't big enough..."

Well, I have been given notice of redundancy after 14 years of service because my job has been effectively outsourced. Not really a surprise as I have been working towards porting our systems into the cloud for two years now. Anyway, if I don't get a new job (and I know several middle aged IT guys on the scrapheap of outdated skills) I will have to fall back on being an evil capitalist landlord to make ends meet. Our new tenants are a professional Spanish couple, both here because no jobs at home, double income barely making ends meet, no family , no car, just to pay the below market rent we are charging on our 2 bed starter home.

Bloody hell RalphW, good luck! And good luck to the Spanish eejits and all...

PS_RalphW wrote:I have been working towards porting our systems into the cloud for two years now.

Er, that isn't the way to make yourself indispensable.
Trust it will all work out. Viewed from a position of retirement, work appears to be over-rated.