A National Income Limit and Better Property Use

I have just heard about the Peoples Manifesto which Mark Thomas is promoting in his current tour. You might like to see what he is doing by going to www.markthomasinfo.com/ where you will also find a useful card you might like to carry if you are young, out late at night and experience the exercise of a power to stop and search. This is not to say that if you are not young you wont be stopped but the statistics seem to show you are unlikely to attract the attention of the police.

Among the policies you will find is the suggestion that if properties are left unoccupoied for more than five years, ownership will lapse and they can be used for public housing. This would have a considerable impact on properties in urban areas but there are many properties in the countryside which would already qualify. One of the big irritations to local families is that their younsters would like to base their lives in their own community but property prices and the non-existence of social housing makes this practically impossible.

When visiting Devonshire and Cornish resorts in years gone by it was always a source of sadness tainted by amusement that the hovels near the quayside, which previously would have been occupied by the fishermen, were now tidy little second homes or holiday lets which once September had passed stood empty until Easter. At the top of the vilage would be a housing estate provided by the old Rural District Council where all the latter day fishermen and other trades now lived. Today, local people don't even have that option unless a housing trust can be persuaded to set up shop. Even families with a plot of land will often find their plans rejected when they want to build a home for the next generation.

In France the 'dessertification' of the countryside becomes obvious when you pass by unoccupied farm buildings ripe for development as holiday homes, usually for Brits, with little idea what they are taking on. Here in the UK if you travel in most parts of holiday Britain after September you will find deserted villages where schools, shops, pubs and post offices have all passed into local memory. This is most ovious in East Anglia andCornwall but they are not alone. I had often wondered how a 'Chelsea by the Sea' came about, but having learnt in recent years how huge City bonuses can be, I suppose it has to be spent on something. More on such things later.

Dacier