Today Cameron and Clegg announced that they will be backing 95% mortgages for first time buyers again. This news doesn’t mean a lot to me being self employed. I’ve already spent over 3 hours today trying to sort out car insurance I can afford to pay for, while still being able to eat every month, so the prospects of actually buying a house are slim to none. I did have a mortgage once, due to an ex-girlfriend’s rich relative dying, but as we aren’t together and I don’t have any rich relatives, let alone ones that are due to die soon, I’m going to continue to be a renting boy (please read that carefully) for some time. However, much like a nosey old lady, I’m very much going to stick my nose in here and question what on Earth they are doing anyway. Yes, its very nice to help first time buyers, if anyone is able to even afford that 5% deposit now anyway, but isn’t this exactly what caused the banks to screw up in the first place?
So the government put in £400m towards helping this initiative happen. Where has this £400m come from? Why is it going to banks who will loan it out to people who will take years to pay it back if they ever can? Bear in mind that many young people now that may be able to afford a 5% deposit are probably also people who’s jobs may be on the line and futures uncertain. Their possibilities of pensions completely eradicated. Yet despite seeing this all happen before, causing a massive crash in the banking sector, causing the government to bail them out then make the public pay for the deficit, its still doing it again?
Yep I can see it’ll boost housing business. It’ll get money circulating again within those industries and so there does appear to be a logic in all of that. There is also sense in that more housing is needed as the population is ever growing, so yep, well done. But overall £4bn has been cut from housing, so this £400m won’t do much except help more people get more debt than they can handle. It’ll detract attention away from all the cuts that have been made to social housing and to how many MPs have housing and building companies shares and bonds in their pockets.
This is what’s happened to my way of thinking. I wish I could see this as a good thing, because that’s what it appears to be on the very surface of it, but with everything they’ve done to the UK so far, it seems like it can’t be. It seems like somehow the first few first time buyers on this scheme will not read the small print and suddenly find that with the 95% mortgage they have to pay back, they also have to carry Lord Heseltine on their backs like his horse wherever he goes and give the devil their soul, as the devil pays sponsorship to the Conservatives every time it happens. Exhausted and without options people have to find a credit repair company with money-back guarantee to do their financing for them, it’s all very depressing. I’ve got to write political material for the excellent LOLitics gig in Camden tonight, and its sad that I feel I’m able to leave it till so late in the day to write stuff because I know there’ll be something. I know that someone in power will say something horrendous or bring their friend to work again or have it revealed that they go round orphanages getting all the change from diseased children. It’s so sad that that’s constantly true. Well, except the last bit.
Can we just, one day before I day, get a party who leads the country by being bloody nice and considerate? Then of course, my career would be a total mess and reduced to pointing out hilarious jokes about how ‘chickpeas are pulses for girls’ or something shit. There is no winning. Unless you have a rich dead relative.
