what on earth

[Exfarmer]

Because it was a Sterling crisis - printing more would just make it worse.

I advised in many RTB conveyancing transactions and hence am in a better position to say what actually happened than my friend ExFarmer. This is what I saw:

1. The houses and flats were all well-cared for and were very sound buys. Fairly self-evident, really.

2. The true buyers were often not the tenants but their wider family, who sensed a Government give away. Again, fairly obvious stuff.

3. I knew the local authority housing chief in my district (also a Labour election agent) who recognised, even then, that the RTB policy prevented new housing stock being built because Mrs Thatcher sensed a political advantage in both giving away our social housing stock and in not replenishing it.

Looking back, it was a shameful episode. Self-defeating, too - Generation Rent will 'do' for the Tories, and deservedly so in my view.

Farmers go around today wishing we had 'another Margaret Thatcher' - actually, it is the very last thing we need if we want to progress.

You are totally correct, regarding the sales and the over generous discounts, except in the begginning of the scheme, it was difficult to actually give away the houses. Many tenants were dissauded by adverse scaremongering that they would be repossesssed etc.
Later as the scheme gained ground , yes there were many families who sponsored there parents to buy the house they had lived in all their lives and without doubt some of these purchases were not always intended for a purely philanphropic reason.
But this really only took off after Mrs T’s departure and could easily have been resolved.
The quality of the housing stock obviously varied dramatically across the country, but where I was brought up, It was very obvious which houses were the council houses and it was not right!

 

[glasshouse]

Just saying everything is wrong isn’t very helpful ! Much the same as the leader of the opposition party.

i didnt say everything was wrong

 

[glasshouse]

Not sure about 1947 act but there was huge pressure in agriculture fripom all sides to change the agricultural tenancies.
It was widely recognised there was a dearth of new tenancies thanks to the fact that once a tenancy was created it was was there until the tenant had no lving heirs.

The fbt was a con, only the landlords wanted it, and it has been a failure.
if they had left things alone, the bodies that let land would still be doing so, on aha tenancies rather than rubbish 5 yr fbt.

 

[Rowland]

i didnt say everything was wrong

Didn’t give any suggestions how to make things better,same wor jez

 

[Fallowfield]

I advised in many RTB conveyancing transactions and hence am in a better position to say what actually happened than my friend ExFarmer. This is what I saw:

1. The houses and flats were all well-cared for and were very sound buys. Fairly self-evident, really.

2. The true buyers were often not the tenants but their wider family, who sensed a Government give away. Again, fairly obvious stuff.

##

In most parts of the country, at the time RTB was introduced, the Council House stock was better built and better maintained than the entry level private housing stock.


The RTB scheme was bare faced, cynical vote buying by Thatcher, who had an ideological hatred of the type of Municipal Socialism that Council Housing represented.

She sold off, for political advantage, an asset paid for by previous generations, to the detriment of subsequent generations.

 

[Exfarmer]

##

In most parts of the country, at the time RTB was introduced, the Council House stock was better built and better maintained than the entry level private housing stock.


The RTB scheme was bare faced, cynical vote buying by Thatcher, who had an ideological hatred of the type of Municipal Socialism that Council Housing represented.

She sold off, for political advantage, an asset paid for by previous generations, to the detriment of subsequent generations.

The big problem this housing stock had not been paid for and there was no provision in place to do so!
I think the debt owed was 60 Billion which was a huge sum then.
What is wrong in putting forward policies which people like? Why did the socialists not believe in helping working class people up the ladder. After all I bet there were very few labour MP's at that time who did not own a house, or possibly a few.
Remember most farmers to have had government assistance buying land, either through the tax system or a subsidy system nominally aimed at food production.
Some housing stock was better than the private sector but huge amounts were in a shocking state. Much of this admittedly had been inherited from many sources. Remember at that time rents were controlled with many people only paying a few pence per week and there was no chance that private of public sector landlords improving them.
In fact the selling of Council houses preceded Maggie Thatcher by 30 years, many conservative councils had been doing this, although the various Labour governments had been imposing restrictions on them. The reason for this was obvious, they relied on these huge blocks of inner city votes and did not believe home owners would be so likely to follow a socialist agenda.
Up till Mrs T there was a great difference across the country as to whether long standing tenants were allowed to purchase, with progressive cities like Birmingham and Manchester encouraging it.
Maggie had seen that it was a vote winner for inner city areas which in the main the Conservatives struggled with. At first the uptake though was slow and many could see little benefit, many believed the houses would not share in the general house price inflation which had made buying elsewhere although a large burden but something that could seem to bring benefits for the older population.
Remember although there been sharp spike in houses price inflation in the past mortgage interest rates , the need for a large deposit , being able to prove a regular income, restrictions on Women in particular, meant house purchase had been seen as a largely middle class aspiration not for the working class.
Maggie made everyone possible to aspire to this.

 

[Fallowfield]

The big problem this housing stock had not been paid for and there was no provision in place to do so!

###

So where had the rents paid by the tenants gone?

If the Right To Buy scheme was such a good idea for Council Housing I assume that you would be in favour of it being applied to the private sector, with the same discounts being applied.

If not, why not?

 

[Exfarmer]

The rents were not sufficient to pay off the interest on the loans, which in the main were 60 year bonds.
However it should not be the duty of society to ensure it did, society should ensure every person regardless of wealth has a good roof over his head.
The failing was in not ensuring these loans were repaid by some system. The original idea was probably based on inflation being the answer to the problem. However we know inflation has a lot of problems and this had been manifest in the recent past where real inflation had often reached 10-15% incurring strike action to push up eages by even more. Manufacturers and others were resistant to this as inflation in there sector was frequently far higher, with the value of the pound dropping it did git scary levels. Massey Ferguson put up the price of tractor by 10% four times in one year!
Of course one of the big costs in the social sector was the cost of maintenance and this was not helped by many tenants doing even simple things for themselves, which any normal houeowner expected to do. Thus the idea of selling these properties to longstanding tenants did have benefits.
Also those who bemoan the sales remember these tenants would in all likelihood have stayed in these homes so the loss to the housing stock is not that great.
The real problem today is the huge cost of property, something which government strategy in the Gordon Brown era drove up at an astronomic rate.
This has ensured the demand for affordable housing has jumped as people are not buying even at the low interest rates we have today.
Instead the market has been dominated by people desperate to find a safe home for capital saved over their lifetime, sometimes even from downsizing themselves, to invest in at a better rate than the banks will give.
I am every bit as happy to subsidise home ownership as I am for farm subsidies. Yes I cerainly had a share of those.

 

[glasshouse]

The rents were not sufficient to pay off the interest on the loans, which in the main were 60 year bonds.
However it should not be the duty of society to ensure it did, society should ensure every person regardless of wealth has a good roof over his head.
The failing was in not ensuring these loans were repaid by some system. The original idea was probably based on inflation being the answer to the problem. However we know inflation has a lot of problems and this had been manifest in the recent past where real inflation had often reached 10-15% incurring strike action to push up eages by even more. Manufacturers and others were resistant to this as inflation in there sector was frequently far higher, with the value of the pound dropping it did git scary levels. Massey Ferguson put up the price of tractor by 10% four times in one year!
Of course one of the big costs in the social sector was the cost of maintenance and this was not helped by many tenants doing even simple things for themselves, which any normal houeowner expected to do. Thus the idea of selling these properties to longstanding tenants did have benefits.
Also those who bemoan the sales remember these tenants would in all likelihood have stayed in these homes so the loss to the housing stock is not that great.
The real problem today is the huge cost of property, something which government strategy in the Gordon Brown era drove up at an astronomic rate.
This has ensured the demand for affordable housing has jumped as people are not buying even at the low interest rates we have today.
Instead the market has been dominated by people desperate to find a safe home for capital saved over their lifetime, sometimes even from downsizing themselves, to invest in at a better rate than the banks will give.
I am every bit as happy to subsidise home ownership as I am for farm subsidies. Yes I cerainly had a share of those.

Those council houses were not expensive, the land was compulsory purchased at agricultural value.

 

[glasshouse]

The rents were not sufficient to pay off the interest on the loans, which in the main were 60 year bonds.
However it should not be the duty of society to ensure it did, society should ensure every person regardless of wealth has a good roof over his head.
The failing was in not ensuring these loans were repaid by some system. The original idea was probably based on inflation being the answer to the problem. However we know inflation has a lot of problems and this had been manifest in the recent past where real inflation had often reached 10-15% incurring strike action to push up eages by even more. Manufacturers and others were resistant to this as inflation in there sector was frequently far higher, with the value of the pound dropping it did git scary levels. Massey Ferguson put up the price of tractor by 10% four times in one year!
Of course one of the big costs in the social sector was the cost of maintenance and this was not helped by many tenants doing even simple things for themselves, which any normal houeowner expected to do. Thus the idea of selling these properties to longstanding tenants did have benefits.
Also those who bemoan the sales remember these tenants would in all likelihood have stayed in these homes so the loss to the housing stock is not that great.
The real problem today is the huge cost of property, something which government strategy in the Gordon Brown era drove up at an astronomic rate.
This has ensured the demand for affordable housing has jumped as people are not buying even at the low interest rates we have today.
Instead the market has been dominated by people desperate to find a safe home for capital saved over their lifetime, sometimes even from downsizing themselves, to invest in at a better rate than the banks will give.
I am every bit as happy to subsidise home ownership as I am for farm subsidies. Yes I cerainly had a share of those.

The money which rtb unlocked boosted maggies knackered economy.

 

[MickMoor]

Rents were driven up by the ridiulous housing benefit rules bought in by the Labour government, where basically, if you found a house to rent but no income for it the government paid.
The result was landlords could charge what they liked and often people were renting totally innapropriate houses proprtional to their income.
Caps have now been introduced but it will not ever get back to sensible levels unless housing benefit was removed.
The upshot was of course many poorer sections of society could afford a decent home, but it meant those who did not qualify for help found themselves were now the ones struggling, particulalry in p,ces likeLondon.
It also drove up a type of fraud prevalent in certain communities , where people were renting at very high rents accomodation from close family members who did not share the same name, frequently even where they were married! These rents were frequently higher than any mortgage repayment , so the government was actually driving the very high house prices we have today.
The government knows there is a problem but sorting it would certainly mean a huge number of votes lost across the spectrum.

So, so, true!