Unsurprisingly, repossessions are at a 14 year high. It would have been unthinkable for the recession to have had any other impact on householder finances, as is indicated by this report on the BBC website today. So it was pretty useful for John Healey, the current housing minister, to be interviewed today on Radio 5. I say ‘current’ housing minister because it’s quite possible that by the time you read this he will have either been fired or done the honourable thing and quit.
Basically, he’s reportedly said that “It can be the best thing for some people to be repossessed.” Yup, that’s right – check out Guido Fawkes here. Now, just in case you’re feeling confused that a member of the party that is purportedly ‘for the people’ is advocating that being evicted is acceptable for some, I will remind you which party he belongs to. New Labour. That’s right. Not the Tories, but New Labour.
Now, my initial thoughts were that he’d basically put his foot firmly in his mouth and what he’d really intended to say was ‘It’s never the best thing for people to be repossessed.’ That was a reasonable expectation of what to be expecting from a ‘socialist’, after all…but I did a Google search and…oh dear.
Unfortunately, this sort of caring approach to the property owning democracy is nothing new for Healey. Take a look at his coments from last year where he lauded a fall in home ownership. So it would appear to be more policy than slip of the tongue. Which makes you wonder what the housing policy of this Government really is.
- Housing policy is to push people out of owning their own houses back in to state or local authority owned housing, redolent of East Germany in the 1970s?
- Housing Policy is to remind anyone who owns a house that they cannot necessarily expect any help if they are threatened with repossession?
- Housing Policy is partially dictated by the banks who want to get some easy money back by repossessing a few more people.
- Housing Policy – like other policies – is to made so ludicrous that New Labour cannot possibly be re-elected and they’ll escape the consequences of their totally fucked-up handling of the economy.
You pays your money, and you takes your choice.
But if you’re one of his constituents – sack ‘im in May. You know it makes sense.