Posted by: Closed Circuit
05/12/2011Places for People has never been short of ideas about how to get the housing market moving again.
But its chief executive David Cowans clearly had other bees in his bonnet when he spoke at the Northern Housing Consortium’s annual conference in York last week.
During a rather bleak state of the nation address, Mr Cowans chastised the purported 25 per cent of men aged 25 to 29 still living at home. ‘Maybe if they got out more,’ he mused before highlighting that only 13 per cent of women of the same age had failed to cut the chord. ‘What I want to know is where have the other 12 per cent gone?’ he wondered aloud.
Could this be the start of a PfP dating agency to help stay at home tenants fly the nest? Closed Circuit certainly hopes so…
Still at the Northern Housing Consortium shindig, chair John Craggs was also thinking of family affairs.
Having regaled the audience with alarming tales of his daughter’s adventures as a film student, the deputy chief executive of Gentoo got onto his son’s life in the army. An apparent thrillseeker, Craggs junior texted dad to tell him he was about to launch himself off the Eiger attached to a bungee chord. Just as dad was about to reply, another beep came through… ‘And I’m doing it naked,’ it said.
Closed Circuit hopes that housing minister Grant Shapps, famed as he is for his love of bungee, is not inspired to follow in the footsteps of Craggs junior.
Finally this week the prize for dedication above and beyond the call of duty goes to Affinity Sutton’s head of research Hilary Burkitt.
Ms Burkitt tweeted on Saturday that she was re-reading the housing strategy (published last Monday) and was ‘shocked that it states being a social tenant on a higher income is an “abuse” equivalent to tenancy fraud’.
Perhaps realising that her choice of light reading on a Saturday morning may surprise some Ms Burkitt quickly added: ‘I should stress that re-reading [the] housing strategy is not what I would ideally want to be doing for weekend fun.’
Closed Circuit can empathise with Ms Burkitt’s pain.
Send your juicy housing gossip to closedcircuit@insidehousing.co.uk
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Readers' comments (1)
F451 | 05/12/2011 3:40 pm
She's read it twice and still can't believe it - such dedication, I couldn't believe it from one reading and definately see no point in a second look.
Mind you, if Shapps had read it once perhaps even he would have recognised what a dog's breakfast it was that was going out as a representation of his years of thinking and planning, and a culmination of 18-months hard work as a Minister.
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