Housing must stop being used as an ‘asset’

Last week’s letters page had the holy trinity of people who I suspect believe themselves to be the upholders of British values Mr Hudson-Gool, Mr Anning and Mr Bullen.

Mr Hudson-Gool: An interesting start, asking in a loose way whether Mr Tebbutt feels sorry for his letter the day before Prince Philip died. I was unaware there was a requirement for foresight when writing into the local paper. Speaking as a young person, I can confirm that the variety of people I messaged about these recent events all came back with a tepid reaction at best. It’s clearly no large poll of the younger generations but it’s a bit better than the rampant speculation throughout your letter. For years, the younger generations have been told that there’s no money and that we shouldn’t allow people to live on bailouts. I suspect younger people will soon question why we’re bankrolling a ridiculously privileged family who already have their own assets.

Correct me if I’m wrong but your argument seems to conclude that an elected executive is going to be just as bad as an unelected one so we should just keep the unelected one that we have no say over? Do you have that little faith in democracy?

Mr Anning: I would’ve responded to your previous ‘young generations are bad, etc ’ letter but I think we trod that ground weeks ago. Clearly you’re determined to instil this generational divide, which is saddening. It’s a shame that the subtext of your letter seems to be that we should be racing to the bottom in regards to helping refugees. Surely we should be striving for the top as an open and inclusive country? The problem that you seem to miss, and yet you get so close to, is that housing in this country is being hoarded as if it is an ‘asset’. If we were to deal with that problem, I suspect we’d find some decent space to be accommodating.

Finally Mr Bullen, the problem with symbolic power is that, almost by definition, it’s symbolic. The Queen has no real voice. The ‘steadiness’ she offers is that people continually have no control over an unelected bureaucratic body. The executive branch of our government hides itself away under the undemocratic nature of the Royal Family. The only say we have is indirectly through our legislative branch, once every five years. Let’s not get too hasty and allow ourselves a direct say over the executive branch too, right?

I suspect none of that will matter because the rest of your letter harks back to the Cold

War. It has strong accents of ‘the enemy within’ and McCarthyism style paranoia. I’m sorry to tell you but as a very recent graduate of a UK university I met a single out and out Marxist lecturer.

The universities are not how you describe them.

Anyway, has anyone got any complaints about the bins or the roads?

Lloyd Allen