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Jobsworth
Published 29 September 2023
By the time you read this the Baggotts will be summering on the Polish Riviera. Again. Thanks to the dodgy timeshare I bought along the coast from Gdansk last year it looks like we will be doing it for the foreseeable future.
But as I bask in the blistering Baltic sunshine at least I will be able to console myself that there were worse investments I could have made. Try asking Martin Dawson in planning about his six-bedroom, four-bathroom villa near Malaga. Things were bad enough when the developer ran out of money to build the golf course it was supposed to overlook. Now he’s heard they’re sending in the bulldozers to knock it down because it hadn’t got planning permission. You can imagine the guffaws that went round the office over that one.
And what about the poor mugs who bought flats in the K Tower? The developers claimed it would be Kerrydale’s ‘signature building’ but the only signatures you’ll find these days are at the bottom of repossession orders. Just don’t mention the fact that it was meant to ‘anchor’ our ‘strategic vision’ for Kerrydale’s ‘urban-rural interface’.
Most of the youngsters all around me were still at primary school last time around. Recession for them means men in black and white in flat caps with whippets. When I tell them about three million unemployed and 75,000 repossessions they look at me as though I’m a faintly embarrassing elderly relative, then get back to watching YouTube and checking their facebook page.
Still, looking on the bright side, at least the pressure is off me as housing delivery champion. It’s hardly my fault if there’s no housing to deliver and no delivery to champion and, thanks to the credit crunch, it looks like the Baggott toast has landed butter side up yet again!
Neil Baggott, FHTPS
