One Of The Great Unanswered Questions Of Our Time...

is - just how much valuable residential property came into the private ownership of politically connected people as a result of the 'right to buy' laws? Whether those to whom they were connected agreed with the policy or not?

One can only wonder. Maybe there was many a wee windfall. Then again, maybe there wasn't.

Righ to buy was a disgrace, pure ideology. To hell with it. In Glasgow, a council house in Broomhill, originally allocated on the basis of need, was always going to be a better potential buy than one in Possil, similarly allocated on the basis of need, on account of its very much higher potential resale value- no disrespect to Possil. The allocation of housing on the basis of nominal need, whether the need was genuine, spurious or perhaps even a contrivance affected in consequence of favourable political connections, could have become a lottery which might have produced significant personal wealth out of nowhere, with the bare minimum of personal risk and subsidised by the taxpayer; a genuine postcode lottery whose winning numbers might just have been G14. The absurd system of discounting that was applied to social housing for sale meant that the taxpayer took a hit on each and every unit that was sold; an unsung Tory addition to the national debt, and one that's never mentioned.

End right to buy. More and better social housing now; all low rise, so that it can be connected to the gas network, and constructed from materials that don't produce condensation dampness in a Scottish January. We have too many asthmatic children and bronchitic pensioners already.