From this morning's City AM:
ONE of the perennial myths about this country is that we are somehow uniquely keen on home-ownership and are culturally averse to renting.
That’s nonsense: 70.7 per cent of those who live across the EU’s 27 member states are owner-occupiers, against just 64 per cent (and falling fast) in England and Wales.(1)
Housing Minister Grant Schnapps in this evening's Evening Standard:
When I was housing minister I got used to meeting couples who put up with cramped accommodation, or were living with parents well into their thirties. They shared the same aim — that first moment of putting the key into the door of a property they could call their own.
The dream of owning your own home is a truly British aspiration. But over the years it has become harder to do.(1) That’s especially true here in our capital.
So what is it, guys? Is the desire to own your own home "uniquely British" or not?
Make up your tiny addled deranged twatting stupid minds pls, and then I will take on the winner and point out that either way, this is completely irrelevant to any discussion about anything.
1) On the factual point, they are both correct. The whole point of Home-Owner-Ism is to reduce the number of home owners by whatever means (and to burden homeowners with the largest possible debts) and they are achieving this, it is not actually that difficult.
The period in which owner-occupation levels were steadily rising (in the UK) was exactly the period with relatively un-Home-Owner-Ist policies. You can hardly call those policies Georgist, but in relative terms and with the benefit of hindsight, they were.
Debate Magazine
