Who knows? The Tories might do something sensible like abolishing inheritance tax. It’s a Labour tax anyway originally intended to destroy the aristocracy, it has done that, now it is being turned on the middle class.

Francis Irvine: “Meanwhile, let’s stop it happening again by preventing crazy mortagages. And by building lots of new houses.”

I believe the indigenious population is due to peak around now, and the result is that the population of the UK would go into a natural relitatively gentle decline – if we didn’t have unfettered immigration. In future there would be a housing glut, which naturally would bring the price of houses down.

*OFF TOPIC*
By the way, I was very heartened to hear the tory policy on the BBC, I am in the 11% who think the policy doesn’t go further enough, why can’t you abolish the BBC licence fee and have the BBC stand on its own two feet like SKY by voluntary subscription?Quite possible using digital TV and smart cards, the BBC keeps telling us how wonderful it, it ought to be quite sanguine about the idea of a subscription based audience.

But at least it is a step in the right policy direction.

Delete food for accommodation and you start to see the agenda.

The consequence of what John is saying seems to be that young people buying houses should borrow many many times their salary. They should take a huge risk, so if they lose their job or interest rates soar up, they can no longer afford their house and it has to be repossessed.

And everyone has to do this – even if you are risk averse, you have no choice, as house prices have increased now *assuming* people are borrowing crazy, unaffordable, risky amounts.

It’s not puritanism saying people shouldn’t be forced to borrow excessive amounts, it’s just sensible financial management. You’re basically asking everyone to gamble that the economy will never go wrong, which is crazy. And you’re asking them to do it for no reason – as no more people can buy houses when mortgages are permissive, since that very permission increases prices making houses unaffordable.

Regarding your last paragraph – the rising generation don’t own houses. Therefore they want a house price crash. And it’s Labour’s boom-and-bust housing policies which, tragically for many, are going to give them it.

Meanwhile, let’s stop it happening again by preventing crazy mortagages. And by building lots of new houses.

Most of the cost of housing is because of the regulations preventing building, or making it more expensive. It is a monopolistic price not a cost based one. All the lending institutions have known this for years & profited thereby so I have little sympathy for them.

Absolutely true, once again a case of the Labour government putting its own political interests ahead of the economic health of the nation. I resent the way the government has also consciously encouraged people to get into debt through cheap credit in order to fuel consumer spending and make it appear that we have a healthy economy. It has all been an obscene confidence trick played on the people of our country. At the last election Labour’s much repeated mantra at every interview was “The economy is good”, during the next election the Conservative party should return the serve with the slogan “The economy is bad”

Banks should not be compensated for the losses they now incur. Nationalisation actually entrenches and endorses the pyramid process. The current loss of confidence, by definition, exposes the previous phenomenon for what it was: literally a confidence trick.

Our hapless government has been the last and biggest sucker to fall for that scam, an easy victim of its own propensity to deceive.

And the public, in debt, rather sadly wandering through the Labour park so heavily populated with park-keepers now realises it has trodden in something – and the public is examining the sole of its shoe.