Rtb End Up As Btl

[The Preacherman]

Great Tory housing shame: Third of ex-council homes now owned by rich landlords

The son of a former Tory Housing Minister and Mrs Thatcher aide during the peak years of right-to-buy owns at least 40 ex-council property

The multi-millionaire son of a Tory minister who presided over the controversial "right-to -buy" scheme is a buy-to-let landlord owning scores of former council flats.

A Daily Mirror investigation found a third of ex-council homes sold in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher were now owned by private landlords.

In one London borough almost half of ex-council properties are now sub-let to tenants.

Tycoon Charles Gow and his wife own at least 40 ex-council flats on one South London estate.

His father Ian Gow was one of Mrs Thatcher's top aides and was Housing Minister during the peak years of right-to-buy.

Other wealthy investors own scores of ex-council properties via offshore holding firms in tax havens in the Channel Islands, the GMB union has found.

Boss Paul Kenny said: "You couldn't make it up. The family of one of the Tory ministers who oversaw right-to-buy ends up owning swathes of ex-council homes."

http://www.mirror.co...council-1743338

[righttoleech]

Another highly successful thief. Lord Gow soon? How about a bonus to deter him from going abroad?

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

I've pretty sure this was the plan all along.

[Monkey]

Another highly successful thief. Lord Gow soon? How about a bonus to deter him from going abroad?

And a few tax breaks

[doomed]

Yes, but the BBC are telling me Justin Bieber was 2 hours late to his concert!

[byron78]

It's the foundation for this mess.

Plenty of fuel on top of course, but Thatcher and co selling off council homes for short term tax cuts was madness.

In this country,because of the complicated planning laws and red tape, the state needs to build homes if enough are ever going to get built.

Would also force private developers to stop hoarding and actually develop quickly and efficiently if they want to profit. Public and private sector can be wings on the same bird if used properly. Too much of one wing or the other and we just go round in circles.

[cashinmattress]

Hmm. Outwith the weasels who this article speaks of, how many ex-council tenants come RTB's and subsequent landlords could be construed as 'rich', because they are likely mortgaged to the hilt?

I wouldn't put much value on that report, because poor and uneducated people which probably accounts for most of the council stock tenancy are not going to make sound and informed financial decisions in their lives; they'll be taking the advise of Phil and Krusty et al as gospel.

They were poor going in, and in all likelihood they will be poor or completely bankrupt going out.

The real trick with Maggie was that she took the a big chunk of historic British socialist liability off the books, to willing stupid people in exchange for a one time gift.

It's the banks, the political establishment, and our greed that's the real problem.

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

The real trick with Maggie was that she took the a big chunk of historic British socialist liability off the books, to willing stupid people in exchange for a one time gift.

And what "historic British socialist liability" was that?

[richc]

It's the foundation for this mess.

Plenty of fuel on top of course, but Thatcher and co selling off council homes for short term tax cuts was madness.

In this country,because of the complicated planning laws and red tape, the state needs to build homes if enough are ever going to get built.

Would also force private developers to stop hoarding and actually develop quickly and efficiently if they want to profit. Public and private sector can be wings on the same bird if used properly. Too much of one wing or the other and we just go round in circles.

Just because BTL parasitism is bad, doesn't mean that state-sponsored parasitism is the answer. Taxing BTL on an even-playing field with owner-occupiers (and fixing the planning mess in this country) would go a long way to solving this problem and would lead to a better outcome than either of the options you present.

[zugzwang]

And what "historic British socialist liability" was that?

The burdensome necessity of paying the working man more than a subsistence wage?

[TeddyBear]

This reminds me of what I saw after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Industries privatised, most people don't really have a clue what it is all about. A few do and buy up assets before others catch on. Others catch on, too late, oligarchs have the assets.

I can see that Thatcher's policy could have some merit - give people an interest, don't encourage a nanny state, however, it was so short sighted it has led to the destruction of quality of life for so many of today's young and actually encouraged a passive approach because people cannot buy and have no security or power to maintain their own places (unlike renters in Germany for instance) so cannot take ownership and have even less control over their living environment than before.

Edited March 5, 2013 by TeddyBear

[cashinmattress]

This reminds me of what I saw after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Industries privatised, most people don't really have a clue what it is all about. A few do and buy up assets before others catch on. Others catch on, too late, oligarchs have the assets.

I can see that Thatcher's policy could have some merit - give people an interest, don't encourage a nanny state, however, it was so short sighted it has led to the destruction of quality of life for so many of today's young and actually encouraged a passive approach because people cannot buy and have no security or power to maintain their own places (unlike renters in Germany for instance) so cannot take ownership and have even less control over their living environment than before.

Some critics suggest that it wasn't the Soviet Union's failure per say, rather, a collapse in western living standards and failure to support standards that saw the west go the way of the soviet union to a degree, with quite a lot of the old communist mantra flooding into the western hemisphere. I don't remember seeing much about 1950's era western women working in factories or in the office. Now it takes everybody working to support a family. My grandparents would have called that very 'commie'.

If it wasn't for the discovery and mainly American investment in the North Sea, we here in the UK would have taken the three days weeks and the rolling blackouts of the 1970's and brought that right through to the millennium and today.

It's going to go back that way at some point in the not too distant future, meaning rationing, except this time we won't have a big pool of energy to bail us out.

Yes, she [Thatcher] was a miserable b1tch to most, but the that era of Britain and investment monies from abroad thanks to oil brought us a very prosperous 40 years, bumps and hiccups inclusive. And, like her or lump her, it was a majority of you voting age folk who re-elected her time and time again.

Edited March 5, 2013 by cashinmattress

[byron78]

Just because BTL parasitism is bad, doesn't mean that state-sponsored parasitism is the answer. Taxing BTL on an even-playing field with owner-occupiers (and fixing the planning mess in this country) would go a long way to solving this problem and would lead to a better outcome than either of the options you present.

No it wouldn't.

We need more houses built.

Your solution isn't a bad one, but it doesn't solve the problem of replacing aging housing stock and the fact there isn't enough of it in the first place.

We need millions of new homes.

Only two real solutions to solve that: either the state builds (which has worked big time in the UK before in terms of houses getting built and economic recovery, whether we like it or not), or the state lets anyone build anywhere they want and cuts all of the red tape stopping property development in this country by anyone but the big hoarding house building companies (untried, and would of course mean "goodbye green belt" - yes you could tax brown field sites if they're not developed quickly, but this still isn't doing enough).

I'd go for a bit of both personally.

I don't think the state building is ideal, but it's blocking anyone else building big time at the moment and helping create a monopoly for the few private companies that do. That's an infinitely worse situation than "evil big state building!" IMO. I'd much rather they'd built houses instead of bailing banks and protecting banksters.

Edited March 5, 2013 by byron78

[Blod]

Just to blame Thatcher is over simplistic. After years of pampering we'd developed a blinkered state of mind that hadn't really changed much from the last war. Taking on the unions and allowing more people to become home owners was needed.

However would she have done these things the way she did if she'd had the foresight to see where we are now. She laid the bedrock that Blair built on politically and we all know where that left us.