Get the Old Fogeys Out

Thanks to Greg in the comments my attention is drawn to this egregious, insidious little campaign.

Older people should be encouraged to move into smaller homes to help tackle the “housing crisis”, a charity says.

I haven’t got as far as checking yet, but what’s the betting that the Intergenerational Foundation is a fake charity?

It is no one’s business how many bedrooms someone has in their house if it is privately owned. Naturally, councils might choose to move people around to make the best use of their stock, but as the property owner, that is their prerogative. If someone has bought their home, it is theirs and campaign groups and fake charities have no place encouraging them to do anything. If they choose of their own volition to downsise, all well and good and many do. If they choose to remain in the family home, that is their business and everyone else should butt out.

The use of language from these nasty bullying busybodies is interesting if one is interested in how totalitarians use soft sounding language to mask malign intent.

The report, entitled Hoarding of Housing, said that 37% of homes in England – about eight million – were under-occupied – meaning they had at least two unused bedrooms. This is up from 20% four decades ago.

Under-occupied is one of the oft used terms when we see these people slither out of the dung heap. These houses are not under-occupied, they are occupied by their owners. My mother in law owns a four bedroom house. She sleeps in one, uses another for an office and the other two are used for family when they stay or occasionally lodgers. The house, therefore, is not under-occupied and how she chooses to occupy it is no one else’s business.

When she first married she lived with her new husband in a one-bedroom flat that they rented. It took years before they could afford a home for themselves and a growing family, so claims that this is a new phenomenon is cack.

“It is perfectly understandable that retired people cling to their home long after it has outlived its usefulness as a place to bring up a family in,” said report co-author Matthew Griffiths.

Outlived its usefulness. Jeebus! While she is alive, my mother in law’s home and that of my parents remains their home. It has not, therefore outlived any usefulness at all. Maybe we should turf them out and put them into one-bedroom government owned ghettos, eh? Get the old fogeys out of it and hand their property over to the young? Well, why not stop them thieving oxygen while we are at it? After all, they’ve outlived their usefulness. A home is not measured purely by utility despite the socialist mindset that sees everything as being the responsibility of the state. The state, fake charities, campaign groups and society at large has no right whatsoever to make any judgements or decisions about the occupation of a person’s own home. It is none of their business.

“But there are profound social consequences of their actions which are now causing real problems in a country where new house-building is almost non-existent.”

There’s a blindingly obvious answer to that one, but no one will bite the bullet and, of course, other campaign groups will spring up to stop it. However, there are new houses being built –  two estates have sprung up around here in the past two years. And choosing to remain in one’s family home after the children have gone is not causing real problems to anyone, anywhere, let alone social consequences.

IF suggested encouraging older people to downsize by exempting over-60s from stamp duty when they sold to move to a smaller home.

Brilliant. They can avoid it by not moving at all, which is even easier.

The campaign group also urged the government to consider replacing council tax with “a proper land tax, to reflect the social cost of occupying housing, particularly housing that is larger than one’s needs”.

Ah, yes, LVT. I just knew that’s where we were heading… 😈

Housing Minister Grant Shapps said: “Whilst this report makes interesting reading, we do not agree that people should be taxed or bullied out of their homes.”

Well said, Grant Shapps. Stick to your guns and tell these people where to get off.

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Update: I was going to make a comment, but forgot, on the insidious suggestion by these creeps that a house may be larger than one’s needs. Who, precisely, decides that? What, precisely is it? Why does that scene in Doctor Zhivago spring to mind? You know the one; where the family home is redistributed by the state. Now they knew how to work out what one’s needs were…

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Update: As is to be expected, the Guardianista wade in on the side of the totalitarians.

As the foundation says, they need to be discouraged from hoarding and made to realise that someone further down the generational chain is suffering as a consequence.

And…

This epidemic of house squatting by the over-55s is the main reason there are so many family homes with only one or two people rattling around in them.

House squatting, you evil little shit! This is the home people have paid for. It belongs to them, not you, and they are not squatting. Fuck you! No one is suffering anywhere because older people are staying in the home they bought and paid for. The very idea is straight out of the Bolshevik handbook of suppression. It is not your place or anyone’s place to discourage anyone to do anything. It is none of your damned business.