Events | 2010.08.17
Roof falls in on home ownership as house prices remain out of reach
Of all our national obsessions, home ownership is top of the pops. We are prepared to scrimp, save and beg for a deposit, and then cripple ourselves financially for 20 years or more to pay off a mortgage. We despise those who pay "dead money" on rent, while those who depend on so-called social housing are simply beyond the pale of polite society.
Now this middle-class article of faith may be crumbling. House prices might be faltering, but they remain stratospheric in relation to average earnings. And now that banks, building societies and other lenders are belatedly tightening the rules, it\'s getting harder and harder, especially for first-time buyers, to climb the property ladder.
Research by property analyst Hometrack suggests that aspiring homeowners in some parts of the country need to build eye-watering deposits of more than £40,000 ($60,000). In London, where property prices are lunatic, a single person would need to earn more than £50,000 a year to get a mortgage on a two-bedroom flat at the grottier end of the market.
The much-respected Chartered Institute of Housing says that home ownership, the ultimate aspiration of at least three generations of Britons, is increasingly untenable. It is urging the government to pay greater attention to the needs of more than 3m households in privately rented accommodation. It also wants action to help the so-called in-betweens – those who earn more than £12,000 a year but less than £25,000 . They are thus unqualified for social housing (there is a waiting list of 1.8 million applicants) and too poor for the mortgage lenders to consider.
The looming housing crisis has been accentuated by the reluctance of house builders and developers to invest in an uncertain market. The eventual consequence could be a massive imbalance of housing supply and demand. That in turn could result in soaring prices. Which is where we came in.
Luvvies\' lament
The row over the government\'s decision to axe the UK Film Council has been ratcheted up with the intervention of Steven Spielberg\'s DreamWorks Studios, and the veteran actor-director Clint Eastwood. Many other top names in cinema have condemned the penny-pinching cut, which seems to have been motivated by an ideological hatred of public funding rather than the need to save significant sums.
Ed Vaizey, the minister responsible, has airily dismissed the concerns of film-makers. He says that tax credits, lottery funding and existing infrastructure will continue to entice producers to Britain. But more than 50 actors, including Bill Nighy, Timothy Spall and Emily Blunt, wrote to the Daily Telegraph to express their dismay.
"Everyone, including those in the film industry, knows that times are tough and the government has to make savings," they wrote. "But the UKFC doesn\'t waste money; it makes it. For every pound it invests, the country gets £5 back."
The bells, the bells
Big Ben, as every schoolboy learns and then forgets, is not the famous tower overlooking the House of Commons. Nor is it the clock at the top of St Stephen\'s Tower. It is actually the biggest of the bells that ding-dong the time. Nevertheless, generations of natives and tourists have used the words Big Ben to mean the place, not the sound.
Therefore, for convenience, we can report that the famous clock-face is being repaired, in a spectacular kind of way. Its internal glazing is being painstakingly replaced, by workmen perched on tall cherry-picking platforms inside the clock works. No doubt some of the tourists who take millions of pictures of the clock every year will see the shadowy figures behind the great white face, and imagine that some exciting film is being shot, or that the politicians within have finally lost their marbles. The only dramatic aspect of the work, however, is the aural danger of being close to the bells when they go ding or, in the case of Big Ben, dong.
Rough reception
Immigrants from eastern Europe who have been unable to find work have taken to eating rats and drinking lethal cocktails based on alcoholic handwash.
This shameful state of affairs has been revealed by Thames Reach, one of the country\'s biggest homeless charities. Destitute people from the new EU now account for a quarter of rough sleepers in the capital.
They are entitled to come to Britain, but until they have worked full-time for a year, they do not qualify for any welfare benefits. That\'s the way we welcome our fellow Europeans.
Gastro-guzzlers
It may not be as bad as eating rats, but taking a meal at a motorway service station is, too often, a shortcut to nausea. Nasty low-quality ingredients, lots of fat and oil, packaged snacks and fizzy drinks, all costing a fortune, are the norm for most travellers. (A noble exception is the Westmorland service area at Tebay on the M6, where the food is good but outlandishly expensive).
But relief may be at hand. Planners have approved a dramatic revamp of the Gloucester Gateway services on the M5. The developers, logically enough, are the owners of the Westmorland station. They want to repeat their formula of sourcing food locally and indeed grow some of it beside the coach park.
The main motivation for the revamped services is to drive down carbon emissions. Which is very worthy, but a bit of a contradiction for an enterprise that makes much of its dosh selling petrol and diesel.
BNP bust-up
The British National party, home of the far-right fringe, seems to be on the verge of disintegration, following a challenge to the leader, Nick Griffin who faced down the takeover bid by London councillor Richard Barnbrook, and followed up with the classic tactic of beleaguered neo-fascists: a thorough purge of dissidents.
Barnbrook has now resigned the party whip, but has remained a BNP member and, inevitably, a standard bearer for those unhappy with the Griffin regime.
The dissidents\' main gripe, apparently, is the party\'s failure to make the breakthrough in the general election promised by its bombastic leader. It is now expected to split into two or more factions, each vying for the racist vote that Griffin failed to mobilise.
Turner unmasked
JMW Turner, arguably Britain\'s greatest painter, was no portrait himself. That is, judging by his death mask, which shows the face of a toothless, emaciated 76-year-old. That\'s all we have had to go on until now, because he stolidly refused to have his portrait painted.
But now an exciting bit of artistic detective work has produced a drawing of Turner, made from an image taken by an early optical instrument. Verified by projecting the image on to the ghastly death mask, it shows matching facial features including eye sockets and size of upper lip.
The 40-year-old Turner, art lovers will doubtless be relieved to learn, was craggily handsome, with romantically wavy hair, a nobly aquiline nose and a manly cleft chin. Kelly Freeman, who researched the image as part of her MA course at Dundee University, now hopes to use computer technology to create a full-colour portrait.
Turner would have hated it.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/17/week-in-britain
