There Is No Money

"There is no money." The semi-famous line written by one Chief Secretary to the Treasury to the next. When that piece of news came out in May of last year, it was funny. The thing is, we're starting to realise that it's true.

The economy is, quite simply, buggered. This morning, the Bank of England announced that pitiful interest rates of 0.5% percent are here to stay, and that if this hole we're in gets any deeper, they may have to start just printing money for the hell of it.

The housing market, too, is suffering. Nobody can sell a house, because nobody's buying. Nobody's buying, because the houses are too expensive. Even if you found one cheap enough, the chances are the bank won't give you a mortgage. So people are turning to rentals. You may not know, but I'm working for a lettings agency at the moment. The picture's not all that pretty there, either.

As people are forced out of the buyers' market, demand for rental properties is going up- and so are prices. The only thing is, housing benefits aren't going up in line with these increases. Furthermore, councils aren't willing to pay deposits for housing benefit applicants. Now, I know it's not characteristic of me to feel sorry for the terminally unemployed, but there aren't enough jobs to go around, and some people are going to miss out.

Now why, when perfectly decent Swindonians can't afford a place to live, can people without UK citizenship apply for council homes in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea - and get them? There is no suitable council housing in Kensington and Chelsea, for a simple reason- it's an affluent area. Yet, the way housing is allocated means that, should someone register themselves homeless in the borough, they could be sleeping in a £2m mansion by next week.

This has been seized upon by opportunists and criminals (some have been convicted of housing-related offences elsewhere) as a way of living it up. One source told of a Somali family who invited tens of friends and relatives to share their council-funded mansion in the borough. Few of them even work, and the property is slowly being destroyed from the inside.

The BBC also broke news of a Swedish couple who both applied separately for council housing in the borough, as well as back home in Sweden. Again, this couple did not work in the UK- they made their money sub-letting the properties they conned the country out of.

What's more, due to a supposed dearth of council homes in Kensington and Chelsea, landlords are being forced by the council to rent out their properties to people they never would have allowed in the first place.

My main point here is, nobody needs to live in Kensington and Chelsea. The neighbouring borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, or across the river in Wandsworth, could easily house the supposed homeless of Kensington and Chelsea. Things need to change so that this is allowed.

I agree, that someone who has lived their entire life in somewhere like Leeds, whose mum is in Leeds, who's job is in Leeds, who's best friend is in Leeds- they get housed in Leeds. But someone from abroad, who has no job, no family, no friends in the country, and funnily enough doesn't want to live in Leeds but somewhere where the streets are paved with mansions- they get housed wherever there's room.

It's not racism. It's sound economic sense. Also, properties in K&C aren't just expensive, they're old and historic, they bring in the super-wealthy in a way that the weather never will. It's not about being prejudiced, it's about doing right by the country. The second we get a government who does right by this country (by the way, we've not had one since '92), I'll be happy. Until then, I'll keep grumbling on.