Force the well-off to take a lodger. New year, new fascist-egalitarian proposal from the Guardian

I hope you enjoyed your holiday. I’ve had about 10 days off away from the world of politics, shunning the papers and Radio 4, and my blood pressure is down, my skin has returned to normal, and my Chief Inspector Dreyfus-style twitch has gone. And then I switch on a computer and saw this:

Let’s take the housing fight to wealthy owners with empty spare rooms
Those who insist on under-occupying their homes should be forced to pay for the privilege, or take in a charity lodger

George Monbiot’s solution to the housing crisis makes me wonder if the time might be right to join a gun-nut militia in Idaho. He writes:

While most houses are privately owned, the total housing stock is a common resource. Either we ensure that it is used wisely and fairly, or we allow its distribution to become the starkest expression of inequality. The UK appears to have chosen the second option. We have allowed the market, and the market alone, to decide who gets what – which means that families in desperate need of bigger homes are crammed together in squalid conditions, while those who have more space than they know what to do with face neither economic nor social pressure to downsize.

I suggest a new concept: housing footprints. Your housing footprint is the number of bedrooms divided by the number of people in the household. Like ecological footprints, it reminds us that the resource is finite, and that, if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need.

I would also like to see an expansion of the Homeshare scheme, which could address several growing problems at once. Instead of paying rent, lodgers – who are vetted and checked by the charity that runs the project – help elderly homeowners with shopping, cleaning, cooking, gardening or driving. Typically they agree to spend 10 hours a week helping out, and to sleep in the house for at least six nights out of seven. This helps older people to stay in their own homes and lead an independent life, gives them companionship and security and relieves some of the pressure on social services and carers. It provides homes for people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them.

Sorry to intrude on your train of thought, George, but the last I heard it was none of the Government’s damn business what I did with my home, and if I wanted to keep a room entirely comprised of my Sylvanian Family collection that was my concern, and no one else’s.

It’s funny how Lefties get more authoritarian as they get older. Last May George suggested that the best way to fight privilege in universities would be by only allowing one pupil from each school to attend Oxbridge, regardless of grades, with the second best going to the second best university, third to the third etc. The great mystery is how someone can be intelligent enough to graduate from Oxford and yet be unable to visualise the problems such a scheme presents (or he just doesn’t care, and the total ruination of the university system is a price worth paying).

The word “fascism” is thrown about liberally in the political arena; this morning a Radio 4 correspondent described the Front National as “fascist”, when they are actually Right-wing populists. Racism and fascism are two different things altogether, and though the Left uses the two interchangeably, George Monbiot’s school and housing schemes are far closer to fascism than the ethno-centric populism of the European radical Right.

Fascism in the name of equality or the environment is still fascism; that anyone takes Monbiot’s ideas seriously, or the authoritarian wartime-style proposals outlined in The Spirit Level, shows how fragile freedom is. The state has no business in people’s bedrooms – ever.

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