It is now quite clear that prices of houses in the better parts of London have fallen sharply and that the "Chelsea ripple" has already started to spread. Here in a less fashionable part of Bristol prices are off by 5-10%. The ripples are spreading. That is great news for young folks wanting to get onto the housing ladder. So what will Theresa May announce tomorrow? Madness. That is what.
Mrs May knows that young voters are overwhelmingly backing Jezza's Labour so is trying to bribe them back into the Tory fold. So she will spend an extra £10 billion to expand the Help to Buy scheme which she claims will make housing more affordable. But market forces are doing that already by sending prices down. The only effect of this wave of taxpayer cash will be to - temporarily - stop the fall in prices of cheaper housing. In other words it will, for a while, create no more affordability. But as prices of all other homes slide as as the £10 billion is spent Mrs May will look like Canute and the prices of starter homes and flats will fall anyway.
Those who took Mrs May's bribe and overpaid will be out of pocket. And the taxpayer will certainly be out pocket. The only winners will be fat cat bosses of housebuilders who will thank Mrs May for helping them clear surplus stock at inflated prices so making unexpected profits. This is a scandal in the making as I exposed last week HERE.
Meanwhile Mrs May is also proposing a series of handouts to students. The political class and academia have pretended that the vast expansion of the UK University system has been fully funded via student fees. That is of course a lie since most students will never pay back their loans. As a result we have created a long term liability (debt not repaid) created to allow academically weak young people to study pointless courses which leave them believing that they deserve good jobs but, in reality, qualified for almost nothing other than a life of bleating.
Now Mrs May wants to hand out more taxpayer cash to the poor students so adding to the nation's vast budget deficit and ballooning debt. In the end that fiscal horror show will blow up. I aim to be retired and fully funded by then so the higher taxes and slashing of public services that will result from folly of the type May proposes won't be my problem. It will be that of today's young voters.
That is the great irony of this madness. Those who will end up picking up the tab for it are those that Mrs May and Comrade Corbyn claim to be helping. But it is a generation who really do believe in the money tree with such a passion that they cannot see how they are being hoodwinked. Mrs May is spending other people's money in a way that this country can't afford but as she is in Government and is meant to be a Tory (i.e. fiscally prudent) there is some restraint on her silliness and folly. For Comrade Corbyn there are no limits and thus, if the useless Mrs May is entering a bribe a millennial contest with Jezza, she is bound to lose it. Her gambit will not work in terms of winning over young voters but in terms of weakening the UK's shaky finances while failing to improve the lot of young folks it scores a perfect ten.
Surely even a buffoon like Boris could not be this useless?