I’ve just had one of those “builders nightmare” conversations. You know the one. “We paid them X thousand pounds and the roof had a hole in it and the floor caved in, and then we waited Y months, and paid Z more thousand pounds …” This particular story ended up in the High Court of the Isle of Man, where my friend did at least get himself a semi-happy ending and isn’t too much out of pocket. But until then, it must have indeed been a nightmare. (I decided to do this blog even as I talked with him, and told him to expect this piece here, and that I would email him how to get to it, which I did. So watch out for a surge in our viewing figure from 90 million to 90 million and one, any day now.)
Why are there so many stories like this, and especially in Britain? First, is it only a British thing? Do Croatian builders do this to Croat householders? Is it like this in Belfast (which is still, just, part of the “UK and Northern Ireland” state)?
Possible answer: UK tax law bullies everyone into “buying” somewhere to live if they can possibly afford this (by going deep into debt), and into not renting as soon as they can afford to buy. If there was no tax advantage in buying rather than renting, much more building repair work would be supervised by large, specialist home-owners whose repeat business would not be something to piss on, the way it is with the wretched individual, building-ignorant UK home-owner.
In general, the relationship between owning-or-renting and freedom is surely the opposite of what it is so often said to be by British Conservatives. Renting equals freedom, not owning. Most home “owners” in Britain are about as free as a bird locked in a cage, which is why your British Conservative so loves his “property-owning democracy”. It puts him and his friends in command of British society. (Or it would, if only they could get the democracy bit right.)
Did you know that during his one lifetime Ludwig Van Beethoven moved house over fifty times? In Victorian England, it is said that people would decide to move, load all their possession onto a cart, and then go looking for a new place. In that order.
