| If you were born between 1945 and 1950, you shouldn’t really be reading this. You should be dead. Especially if you’re a man.
Life expectancy in the UK is on average 83 for women and 79 for men. So, the post-WWII blip in births – the Baby Boom – is now becoming the Deadly Doom as the teddy boys of the 60s and the Hippies of the 70s go to meet their maker. The Grim Reaper is already herding up the Teddy Boys, who only have another seven years to go and soon after the Hippies will be heading for the Spirit the in Sky. (Since you ask, Norman Greenbaum, 1969.) You can’t take it with you – your home, that is, so you’ll have to leave it behind, and we can expect a nice glut of properties built in the boom-time of the 1960s and 1970s. That was when we were actually building 300,000 homes a year, not just talking about it. Are you listening Michael? Right now, these houses are occupied by pub bores who will tell you: ‘Yeah, mate I bought my house for £10,000 and my mortgage was only 9/6 a week, old money you know.’ Or, ‘I’ve never voted conservative, me, but I have to hand it Mrs. T with her Right to Buy, otherwise I’d never have been able to live in Dunrentin.’ Then the bore will moan about kids living in the spare room and refusing to move out. ‘Can’t afford it, mate. Useless this Tory crowd. By the way, did you see they want to build on the field – ridiculous, mate, we’ve got to protect nature.’ As well as Right to Buy, people also have Right to Die, and they will. Or be shoved into a cheapest rat-infested retirement Home the kids can find. So, all of those 1960s and 1970s homes will trickle onto the market and attract a premium, especially the ones on the now-gentrified council estates which were built to exacting local authority standards. So, all these Gen X, Gen Z and Millennials can stop whining and get on with their lives in the new old homes. Until time catches up with them too. On that happy note… Have a good bank holiday weekend. Tom |
by the Planning PR guru 