Ben Reeve Lewis Newsround #32

[Ben Reeve Lewis thinks that the world is going mad …]

DJ madness

I was in Cardiff this week, training a group of housing officers for the Chartered Institute of Housing on how to successfully obtain possession orders.

I’ve been delivering the course for 10 years now and every single time the delegates complain that their county court judges are entirely mad and inconsistent with their decisions, I reassure them that every housing officer up and down the land has the same complaint about district and circuit judges but it isn’t just DJs who are mad. in fact madness is my theme this week.

Madness in the kitchen

Whenever I am at Cardiff I always shoot into their fantastic covered market to fishmongers, E.Ashtons to buy a tub of laver bread, which I adore in bacon sandwiches, or more precisely, bacon and scallop sandwiches. I can never find it in London.

I brought it into work today to dip some crackers in it and get looks of abject horror when I offered some to my colleagues who think I am barking mad. Frazzy says it looks like something I have just scraped off of my shoe and refuses to even look at it. I am going to sneak it into a sauce for dinner and then surprise her with the news afterwards.

Bedroom window madness

Nearly Legal flagged up a hilarious – if it wasn’t depressing- article in the Guardian  about an exchange of ideas going on in government about the ministerial definition of a bedroom for the purposes of universal benefit when it comes in.

The idea being that if a person has a room that they aren’t using they will have money knocked off their payments. Lord Freud conceded that a box room with a window that doesn’t open wouldn’t count.

Lord Foulkes suggested that this may lead to social housing tenants boarding up their windows to avoid benefit cuts to which Lord Freud said mysteriously that the government would work to prevent such action.

Lord Foulkes told the observer “The response was almost as if they had some window police or authorities to check up with people to stop them blocking up windows to avoid moving”.

Now maybe the laver bread is affecting my sanity but I am starting to see a solution that might help bring down unemployment through the creation of an army of fake window cleaners who would be silently Squidgying-away surreptitiously checking if the window opens or not. Sending a signal back to the spotter in the back of the van, 2 brisk slaps of the chamois leather for yes, 3 slaps for no.

House price madness

And more madness was revealed this week by 24 Dash in an article that showed house prices in the south west of England are currently 12-13 times the average salary for the area.

I lived down there for a few years and local wages were appalling. There has always been the idea voiced that it is cheaper to live in the country which is not what I found at all. Food and clothing were the same price as anywhere. The only things cheaper were rents and house prices but wages were so low it balanced out. Now if housing costs are coming up and wages are stuck where they were when I lived there people are going to seriously suffer.

Most people I knew down there were doing 2 or even sometimes 3 jobs just to get by. I wonder what they think of all this?

The article reports that despite homelessness applications in the region rising by 10% local authorities have axed plans to build 106,000 new homes. Madness.

Spooky madness

It was also reported this week by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors that murders and hauntings can drive house prices down. However they also said that having an ex celebrity occupant can drive house prices up.

They didn’t say anything about the effect on house prices of celebrity ghosts though. I’d buy a house that was haunted by Errol Flynn, wouldn’t you?

Demolition disaster

And finally, the maddest of mad ideas doing the rounds at the moment. This takes us into social housing territory folks, bear with me as it is situation that should have been a sub plot in Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’.

Everyone knows that we have a housing crisis, largely because we don’t have enough homes for people to rent or buy. Forget affordable or PRS rents and mortgage deposits for a moment and just concentrate on house numbers.

The country is screaming for new homes to be built. Government say they are pushing as fast as they can to get this done. Some people are claiming that major developers have around 250,000 plots with planning permission already granted but are sitting on it to boost prices. Whatever angle you take, we need more homes, nobody disagrees on this.

Now there is a thing called the Housing Revenue Account, HRA, on which a national debt of £21 billion (yes that’s not a misprint) has been spread over the country’s stock owning councils based on the amount of houses that they have.

The less houses you own come 2017 the less debt you have to take on. So in order to reduce their debt several councils are planning to demolish homes. Reported in Inside Housing  Nottingham and Birmingham city councils plan to knock down 2,000 homes between them. The former estimating that if they knock down 973 properties they will lose £10.2 million debt.

Eastbourne council are planning to demolish retirement blocks to reduce their debt, at a time when there is much brouhaha about the elderly downsizing to free up stock for others.

Is that mad or what?

And as the men with butterfly nets chase me around the office in an attempt to prevent me from invading Russia on a small white horse spare a thought for Frazzy and her dinner tonight. I have found a recipe for a sauce of laver bread mixed with cream, chicken stock and the juice of an orange to serve over a lamb chop. Evil genius or just mad?

Ben Reeve Lewis

Ben has started Home Saving Expert, to share his secrets to defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties and catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.

Laverbread picture by Sarah and Ian, attic room picture by David Barrie