I am not the only one to have expressed anger at the IF report on housing. The most recent to pick up on it is Alasdair Palmer in the Torygraph. His final two paragraphs nail what is rotten about the IF and the insidious thinking behind its nasty little report.
To see that situation as unjust, you have to think that the old folks aren’t really entitled to their houses (or their money). You need to think there is something fundamentally unjust about private property. Houses, on this view, don’t really belong to any individual: they belong to the community, the collective. And in an ideal world, the community should decide how that good is allocated, by ruling on who needs it most, and whether or not it is fair that any particular individual should be able to enjoy it when others do not.
To my surprise, this does seem to be the premise that underlies the Intergenerational Foundation’s criticism of the present situation. For if the Foundation accepted the justice of private property, what would be the basis for saying that there is something unjust about old people staying in their own homes? “Generational justice” turns out to involve a form of creeping collectivism, in which people are permitted to possess only what they are deemed to “need”. It isn’t just old people who should be worried by that: anyone, of any age, should be seriously alarmed.
Quite so. I am not retired and I do not live in a large property – although we do have one room that is not used as a bedroom, but could be. I am alarmed because this organisation is failing to acknowledge the principle of private property. It assumes that homes are resources that need allocation. They do not – unless you are the property owner, in which case, allocate away to your heart’s content. My home, my mother in law’s home and my parents’ home are all private property. How many rooms they have and how we choose to occupy them is of no consequence to anyone and we do not owe the community anything, nor do we owe the younger generation anything. It is, as I have oft stated; no one else’s business, certainly not the state and most certainly not some odious, sleazy fake charity.
A tax on “spare” bedrooms looms large, owners woulkd be exempt for each bedroom let to an asylum seeker/traveller (contradiction of the term)/piss arsed student/drug addict.
And, as I read elsewhere, the ‘report’ was ‘launched at the Houses of Parliament by none other than Tessa Jowell.
More interfering dross from the Neo-stalinist Labour dross.
The more I read about it, the more of Labour’s fingerprints I find on it. There’s a surprise.
I do wonder where the folks who made this report live.
Publicly owned property? I doubt it to be honest.
More on the hypocrite behind it – especially his defence of his parents’ own large house.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052351/The-man-says-pensioners-leave-nest-homes–1-5m-bedroom-des-res-parents-live-alone.html
Heh! Lefty think tank sleaze ball is a hypocrite shokker…
I suggest a string of complaint to the Charity Commissioners about this, and the other fake so-called charities woud do the trick.
Pusing ethnic cleansing of older people is not a “charitable” actt.
Angus Hanton is the culprit. Remember the silent ‘g’ if you ever meet him.
” . . . the ‘report’ was ‘launched at the Houses of Parliament by none other than Tessa Jowell”
And how many houses has she got (that we’re paying for)? It’s no wonder they’ve taken great care to disarm us, is it?
Having sponsored its launch in a House of Commons hospitality room, Jowell seems to be trying to distance herself from the report now it’s raised quite such a furore:
“The Intergenerational Foundation […] is located in my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood. I supported the launch of their first major report in the House of Commons yesterday as their local MP.”
(quoted by Joseph Kelly at totalcatholic.com as a personal response by Jowell to his tweet on the subject)
It never ceases to surprise me how these people can so misjudge the likely reaction to their pronouncements. I would have thought it blindingly obvious, but that’s just me…
Ah, the cozy certainties of Home-Owner-Ism, where we never have to confront facts – let alone actually read the report we are now desperately misrepresenting, ’cause we get our views straight and undiluted from the Torygraph & the Daily Mail – and it’s always somebody else’s fault; where depriving other people of their property is fair game but one’s own govt protected privileges will be defended to the hilt. It’s nothing like the cold raw world of free market capitalism, why, that’s close to anarchy!
Wishing to remain in the home you have bought and paid for is not home ownerism. It is not only perfectly reasonable, it’s no one else’s damned business. And it is not depriving anyone of anything. That’s pure communism, frankly. You disappoint me. Need more housing? Build more houses. Suggesting that older people are hoarding something that they have paid for and own is deeply repugnant and is simply not true.
As for prices – we agree that they have become inflated, but again, when someone buys a home and lives in it (which is the point of buying it), they have not done anything to contribute to that. So, no, it isn’t their fault.
And irrespective of the report, the authors have shown us their true colours in the words they have stated in its defence.
There was no need for a report and there is certainly no need for another fake charity apparently funded by an EU grant (in which case, money stolen from us) – and again, I’ll keep saying it because it seems to be having some difficulty taking root – people living in the homes they have paid for is no one else’s damned business. And no one has any place whatsoever nudging them to do anything.
BTW – I have read the report and am not misrepresenting it.
Well, Longrider’s original article referred to BBC and Guardian articles not to the Telegraph and Daily Mail. The Guardian notes:
As the foundation says, they need to be discouraged from hoarding and made to realise that someone further down the generational chain is suffering as a consequence.
Whereas the BBC perhaps gives us a clue to Mark Wadsworth’s comment:
The campaign group also urged the government to consider replacing council tax with “a proper land tax, to reflect the social cost of occupying housing, particularly housing that is larger than one’s needs”.
The report itself is offensively entitled Hoarding of Housing, and the following comments indicates that they are a bunch of socialists (right down to the usual socialist hypocrisy as noted by John Page above):
IF believes that a debate should be held over how we use our existing housing stock.
“Our existing housing stock” indeed.
Incidently, presumably Tessa Jowell would provide the same services if she had the KKK or Al Qaeda based in her constituency.
Incidentally, using tax to manipulate peoples’ behaviour towards an “acceptable” social norm is the antithesis of free market capitalism.