Private Eye test (From York Press)

Private Eye test

9:49am Tuesday 11th May 2010 in

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OUR city council features twice in the current issue of the satirical magazine Private Eye.

Firstly, the disclosure by Matthew Laverack that the council had included 57 bunk beds in hostels as ‘affordable homes’ (the Eye wondered about cardboard boxes also); and, secondly, the error by the acting returning officer in giving the wrong date for the election.

In the years after the war, during which there had been no new homes built for six years, local authorities built millions of new homes funded on 60-year mortgages by the Public Works Loan Board at interest rates of one-and-half to two per cent. If the council has a statutory duty to provide homes for families in need, why doesn’t it get on and build them instead of this fatuous attempt to get private builders to include 50 per cent of affordable homes in their plans?

I suspect this is another example of the Labour government’s social engineering to provide mixed estates. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government achieved this by selling council houses to those tenants who wish to buy.

Bill Heppell, Riseborough House, Rawliffe Lane, York.