Lunchtime News Thursday 21 February 2024

Modern apartments being built in major cities across England will not sell due to low demand, says house building analyst Alistair Stewart. Stewart believes that these blocks of town centre apartments for young affluent urbanites do not offer the right image of high life living. As a result their prices will fall drastically. Stewart continues that the housing market is a ‘house of cards’ set to implode following ‘reckless mortgage lending, chronic oversupply of new flats and widespread fraud.’

The Daily Telegraph reports that a small terrace house in County Durham is set to become the first home to be effectively repossessed by the Government following the nationalisation of Northern Rock. However, in the same story the proprieties wife is quoted as stating ‘It’s got nothing to do with Northern Rock and the takeover.’ Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

House buyers have paid £31.5 billion in stamp duty in the past 10 years. Since Labour came to power, the percentage paid in stamp duty has increased by 675 percent, from £830 million in 1997-98 to last year an incredible £6.5billion.

Retired couple, Joe and Patricia Gilling, have had their £700,000 house bulldozed by the local council as it apparently breached planning permission. The retired couple had sought permission to convert the barn into a house and build holiday homes on the surrounding land. However, council officers ruled that the barn breached its planning permission as the changes were so drastic that they constituted a new building.

Senior citizen, Mr Fitzmaurice, has been jailed for refusing to pay his council tax. He owed £I,359 in council tax and £209 in bailiff and court costs, but refused to pay in protest about pensioners being unable to keep up with increasing council tax and food and fuel costs. This is not the first time that he has refused to pay. In 2006 he went to prison for 32 days, this time he received a 34-day sentence and will serve it in a category-B Bedford prison alongside murderers and rapists.