If you build houses you get economic growth it really is that simple. I defy any economist to disagree. The first quarter of Housing Association homes began shown above is for April 2010 to June 2010, that is to say the last economic quarter of the Labour government. Guess what? We had economic growth of 1.1% that quarter. Our economy grew by more than £15,000,000,000 in 13 weeks. In the first 13 weeks of 2012 the Tories began building just 3,800 Housing Association homes, less than half of Q2 2010. And they wonder why we are in double dip recession? The graph however clearly shows that Grant Shapps has given up on housebuilding. In the first of a series of graphs I'll publish today you can clearly see that the number of homes we are now building is falling steeply. We build twice as much Housing Association homes two years ago as what we are doing now. The graph above does not show council homes but I can tell you that in England and Wales we commenced building on just 100 ( yes one hundred) council homes in the first 13 weeks of 2012. How are we supposed to get economic growth with such poor levels of home building? Why are we reintroducing Right to Buy when we are not replacing the homes we are selling with new builds? Why is it that we have 5 million men, women and children languishing on housing waiting lists yet we refuse to build any homes? Why is it that the billions of pounds we will now give to private landlords in housing benefit will keep on rising? This government is a bunch of incompetent buffoons who are both unfit to hold high office and in the process of wrecking the United Kingdom.
Figures just released by the Office of National Statistics claim that the number of households living in fuel poverty has declined by 0.7million ( see data here ). The government say that less than 5 million households live in fuel poverty, while Uswitch claim that 6.3 million households live in fuel poverty. Uswitch's figure is much more reliable as their's summer 2011 price hikes. We say a family is in fuel poverty when it spends 10% of household income on its dual energy costs of heating the home and operating cooking and electrical appliances. However, as USwitch explain the governments figures are appallingly out of state ( here ). The publication today by the government only examines fuel costs up to the end of 2010. The Office of National Statistics does admit that if it factored in housing costs then 3 million more households could be described as living in fuel poverty, it also admits that 72% of English households faced a high risk of fuel poverty at year end (2010)....
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