I don't shout the radio very often- usually it's the television that suffers- but this morning's Today programme got me going.
It was on the back of the terrible news from various housebuilding firms laying off large numbers of their staff. No doubt for Stewart Baseley of the Home Builders Federation it was the tumbling share prices of the Federation's members that concerned him.
Stewart Baseley
Listen to the interview between the gentle Ed Stourton here and the wretched Baseley.
Baseley asked for special treatment for the house building industry. Stamp duty holidays for first time buyers, interest rate reductions and mortgage interest relief for first time buyers. But this buffoon, after confirming that building companies operate within "market conditions" wanted the government, aka the taxpayer, aka you and me, to finance these. No chance of allowing those same "market conditions" to operate to allow first time buyers to afford the Federation Members' products then?
He was asking the taxpayer to finance yet another housing boom! Just crazy?
I don't recall Baseley marching in support of the collieries, shipbuilders and the rest of manufacturing industries that disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s leaving thousands unemployed and many small communities devastated.
