Has IDS got a point here?

[Kayless]

http://news.sky.com/h...tics/article/16127392
Yoof do seem to idolise brainless celebs I suppose but is it related to the riots?

[emmie]

jno, some are so poorly informed about right to buy, this debate has raised it's ugly head before. Many who did buy had paid rent for years and years, and got nothing for it mind, except a roof over their head, and some decided when the option rolled around to buy they took it. So instead of just paying the council rent, they became home owners, so paid the mortgage instead, plus all the bills for any modernisation if needed in their apartment blocks, deemed necessary by the council, and that could often be ten of thousands of pounds. Being a council tenant isn't so much the bed of roses many seem to think, and like our properties most have had little in the way of modernisation or like us what was desperately needed we did ourselves.
And that also applied to other families i have known over the years, who had a degree of pride in the homes they rented, then eventually purchased.

[craft1948]

I lived 2 minutes away from what was once described as 'the roughest street in York'................it was so bad many people when offered houses there would turn it down.
After the right to buy came in the street was transformed, literally overnight.

[emmie]

SC, i am not sure why that isn't fairly straightforward. If you don't understand, seems pointless going over it all again.
Kayless, seems IDS has a point, some may not get it though.

[anotheoldgit]

jno

/// So would you care to debate the right to buy? ///

Yes I am prepared to debate it, you ask:

/// Did it encourage enterprise? Or willingness to work? ///

Yes it did encourage enterprise, by it's very definition, "a willingness to undertake new ventures"

The venture? to branch out to own a piece of property, that thy wouldn't be able to afford otherwise, much the same as what is proposed for the young couples of today to enable them to get a foot on the property ladder, that being joint mortgages.

/// Or did it just encourage a sense of entitlement? "I live here therefore I am entitled to own it, ///

Yes they did have a sense of entitlement, that is why they had to have been paying a rent on the property for quite a number of years, before they had the right to buy.

/// and never mind that other people have actually had to work to raise the full cost of a home. ///

They didn't sit on their 'Buts' and have their mortgages paid for them, no they had to work very hard to afford to pay their rents at first and then to enable them to pay survey fees, solicitors fees etc. to enable them to transfer the property's ownership, that was before they started paying off their mortgages.

But then all this is against socialistic ideals, they wish to keep the working class in servitude to the state and the unions, beggar the thought of them ever standing on their own two feet.

[jno]

"Many who did buy had paid rent for years and years, and got nothing for it"

Of course they had! That's what renting is. That's why other people choose to save their money and buy instead of renting. But Thatcher moved the goalposts.

So now as well as being entitled to council housing (while others who rented were not), they were entitled to buy it. But they had not been required to do anything to acquire these entitlements. Lucky people, eh?

[jno]

'Nothing MrsT did gave "entitlement"'

Excuse me? She gave people an entitlement to buy the homes they'd been renting. How is an entitlement not an entitlement?

[Kayless]

So on planet jno, the people who bought their council houses where cheating. So basically they where on state benefit, right oh! I know you love those on benefit jno so that must be good right?

The right to buy only made it possible they still had to work and pay the mortgage, now that must be good surely.

[emmie]

jno, well i can tell you our local council did very little for it's tenants, except claim the rent, no decent bathrooms, loos, kitchens, and so all the money one paid in rent went into the council coffers and stayed there. The problem being is you may have had enough to pay rent but not quite enough to get a mortgage, so when the chance came, then some took it, and i don't blame them.

[sandyRoe]

"more needed to be made of people who have done well out of serious hard work"
You could work your guts out and still end up with so little that you'd need pension credit to try and make ends meet.

[jno]

they were offered it at a discount, Kayless. Did they have to do something to get those discounts? Do buyers in the real world get discounts?

[ladybirder]

Oh dear you do seem to have trouble with em's but SC.

[Kayless]

the right to buy was not entitlement, that needed to be added by endeavour I have the right to buy anything for sale doesn't mean I can afford it. MrsT encouraged self betterement through hard work, an alien concept to her critics.

[jno]

I'm not blaming anyone, em, I'd have done the same.

I'm just saying it created an entitlement that wasn't there before. Previously, living in poor accommodation was an incentive to work your way up to better housing. Now all of a sudden the government (which didn't own it) was prepared to provide it to you cheap. That sounds like socialism in action - not the opposite.

[jno]

what's supposed to be the difference between "right" and "entitlement", Kayless? Tenants did NOT previously have a right to buy their houses. (Councils had a right to sell it, which isn't the same thing.)

[emmie]

jno, the way i see it, the idea was to get some people who couldn't get a mortgage, or very unlikely to at least, get on the property ladder, by offering an incentive, So some bought the property they had lived in for years and became home owners. As Kayless has said, the scheme has it's flaws, but for some of those that bought their homes, had endless problems, none of which has been covered here.

[sp1814]

IDS is talking rubbish. It's the kind of rubbish that older people tend to spout out when describing the young, because they simply have no idea about who the young look up to.

A brief conversation with my 19 year old nephew threw up the names Adele, Tinie Tempah, Taoi Cruz (not sure of the spelling), Ant & Dec, Prince Naseem and 'those Harry Potter kids' as people to whom they look up to.

Yes, there is a subset who hero-worship the 'stars' of TOWIE, Katie Price and their ilk, but kids aren't dumb - they know trash when they see it.

I would ask IDS whether it was the 'something for nothing' values which lead to his fellow MPs shafting us with their expanses claims...?

[emmie]

I'm an oldie, as to my mother, she is a super oldie, but we know one thing, stealing is wrong, whether it's MPs expenses or a looted flat screen TV from Argos. And strangely perhaps, we oldies also know many of today's artists and those who young people look up to, as we have children, grand children, nieces, nephews who talk about them, and watch television with. As regards IDS, it's his opinion, which is something most of us have. No one has to agree with it.

[jake-the-peg]

And is it right or wrong to get drunk and smash up restaurants?

I guess if you go on to be Prime Minister, Chancellor or Mayor of London and you do it wearing a waist coat it's OK

http://www.guardian.c...b-david-cameron-riots

[rov1100]

When they do away with grammar schools, treat everyone as equals in comprehensives, thinking that a GCSE is a route to the top jobs and everyone told they are the bees knees you could quite believe there are no longer any failures out there.