When the right to buy your council home was introduced in 1980, it was heralded as the "property-owning democracy" coming to fruition. In a prime example of how much political rhetoric now has the ring of a Homebase catalogue, David Cameron proclaimed last week that the policy's revival would buy electors their first "vital rung on the property ladder". Democracy doesn't come into it when it's every man for himself.
Such a toehold is now "vital" to those without one, only because those who are caught between the council waiting list and the private rental market know that without it they, and their families, may spend a lifetime in insecure and inadequate housing. Rather than creating "stable mixed communities", among other such claims made by the prime minister of the new scheme, surely being on a ladder requires always being prepared to move?
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