A while ago (a year or two?) I was having a fag at the smoking shelter near where I work (in London) and struck up a conversation with a middle-aged bloke wearing a delivery driver/removal company-type uniform doing the same.
I asked him, out of the blue, whether his children (I gambled on them being in their teens or twenties) were struggling or would probably struggle to pay the rent/mortgage and he confirmed wholeheartedly that that they were/would.
I followed up by asking him whether he thought it might be a good idea to start building a load of council housing again, so that his children can simply get a council flat/house for £100 a week with no further hassle, the rest of their money would be theirs to keep, no big worries about being evicted if they lost their jobs etc.
Again, he confirmed that he thought the idea had a lot of merit and we chatted on in this vein for a couple of minutes.
As he was stubbing out his fag, he pointed out one possible drawback from his children's point of view: they'd never be able to make a windfall gain by selling a house for vastly more than they paid for it. Which sort of made a mockery of everything we'd agreed on in the previous few minutes.
Debate Magazine
