18th April, 2015

Tendring Topics……on line

Buying Votes…….with other people’s money!

          That’s how I described the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation introduced by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the ‘avaricious 1980s’.  ‘Compel to sell’ legislation might have been a more appropriate name for it.

            For almost a century prior to the advent of Thatcherism, local authorities throughout the UK had built council houses to let, in order to combat homelessness and overcrowding in their areas and to rehouse families from individual unfit houses and properties in ‘clearance areas’ that were to be demolished.  They allocated tenancies according to housing need, without paying particular attention to whether housing applicants were poor or comfortably off.  I think that, on the whole, they were successful.  Slowly but surely, slums were demolished, overcrowding eradicated and substandard houses improved or demolished and replaced. I know that in the years before local government reorganisation in 1974, while I was Clacton-on-Sea’s Housing Manager, no-one was forced to ‘sleep rough’, under the Pier of instance, for want of a roof over their head; nor did we have to resort to providing bed-and-breakfast accommodation for homeless families.   The Council had a modest annual house building programme and this, together with casual vacancies resulting from a death or a tenant moving away, prevented even temporary homelessness.   

            All that was changed by ‘right to buy’.  Local authorities were compelled to sell homes to sitting tenants at bargain basement prices.   Many of the better off (and least troublesome) tenants took advantage of the legislation and bought their council provided homes.   Some of them took advantage and sold them on directly they were able to do so.  Some of those houses were bought by speculators and again let – but this time at a much higher ‘market dictated’ rent.  Councils were told not to let homes to people who could afford to buy or rent privately.  Tenants could not expect a home for life – tenancies were for a short fixed period, and were not renewed if the circumstances of the tenant had changed.  The government made clear that ‘social housing’ should be a temporary provision for the poor or, as Mrs Thatcher preferred to put it breathily, ‘for the genuinely needy’

Inevitably Council Estates deteriorated. Tenants had no incentive to tend their gardens, redecorate their rooms or take any pride in their homes.   Former tenants who had bought their homes sold them directly they were able to do so, taking advantage of accelerating house price inflation, and moved on to a better area.   Councils no longer had any incentive to build homes that they knew would have to be sold on ‘on the cheap’ after a few years.  Nationwide demand for homes vastly outstripped supply. Inevitably both rents and house prices rocketed and the housing situation that we have today developed.

            Those extra votes that ‘right to buy’ undoubtedly won were very dearly bought indeed.   But extra votes, from former tenants who had bought their homes ‘on the cheap’ at their Council’s expense, they certainly did buy.

            Now, with the general election only weeks away, the opinion polls indicating that the Conservatives and Labour are neck-to-neck, the Lib.Dems. nowhere in the polls, and Ukip and the Greens threatening both the main parties, the Conservatives are hoping that they can pull off the same trick a second time.

            Local authorities were not the only providers of ‘social housing’.  Housing Associations also housed thousands of folk who couldn’t aspire to home purchase (I say ‘home purchase’ rather than ‘home ownership’ because, as many home purchasers have discovered, no-one becomes a home owner until he or she has paid off the final instalment of the mortgage loan)   Prior to ‘right to buy’, Housing Associations provided a much smaller proportion of social housing than local authorities.  However during its decade of power New Labour did nothing to repeal the pernicious ‘right to buy’ legislation and Ed Miliband actually apologised for the fact that his party had opposed it!  Consequently Housing Associations have provided a steadily increasing proportion of the UKs social housing.

            Evidently hoping that his proposal will buy as many votes as Margaret Thatcher’s did back in the ‘80s David Cameron has  promised that, if the Conservatives form the next government, tenants of Housing Associations will enjoy the same ‘right to buy’ as council tenants.  The government’s costs will be recovered by compelling local authorities to sell off their most expensive housing when it becomes vacant and thereby, so they believe,  raising £4.5 billion a year.  (This is, of course, the same government that claims to believe in loosening the power of the state and putting local matters in the hands of local people!)

            Will it work for a second time?  Will this ploy be as successful in buying votes as Margaret Thatcher’s was in the 1980s?   Possibly not; prior to the 1980s central government did not dictate housing allocation policy to local authorities.  Many –perhaps most – authorities allocated tenancies on the basis of need for accommodation.  The applicants’ financial circumstances were a minor consideration. Certainly neither of the authorities for which I worked as Housing Manager in the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s barred any applicant on the grounds that they could have found private rented accommodation or could have bought their own house.

            Consequently when Margaret Thatcher offered all council house tenants the ‘right to buy’ their home with a substantial discount on the actual value, there were hundreds of council tenants eager and able to become home buyers and take on the responsibilities, as well as  the privileges of ownership.   That was a long time ago.  Since then social housing has been allocated only to unemployed or low waged people with few resources and often large families.  A great many of them wouldn’t be able, or wouldn’t wish, to take on the responsibilities of home ownership no matter how large a discount they were offered.    I doubt if many will respond positively.

            Anyway if they’re wise they’ll remember that it will only happen if the Conservatives win an overall majority in the general election.  If I were a Housing Association tenant I wouldn’t be getting too excited about the prospect of home ownership just yet.  I wonder if David Cameron has ever thought of extending the ‘right to buy’ to tenants of privately owned properties?  Probably not; private landlords are almost certainly Conservative Party supporters.

Is ‘Ironic Fate’ waiting in the wings?

          I once had a colleague with a firm faith in what he called ‘Ironic Fate’ (or I.F. for short)     I.F. was continually on the look-out for humans who took the future for granted, and handed out an appropriate punishment.  He believed that the fate of the Titanic was sealed when the Captain declared that ‘God himself couldn’t sink this ship’.   Hitler did the same thing by promising Germans ‘a thousand year Reich’. My colleague took this conviction to extremes.  He would never, for instance, put up the new office calendar on 31^st December, because that would have been taking for granted that we’d survive into the New Year.

I don’t personally believe in an ironic fate waiting to catch us out but I have thought a lot about I.F. or Nemesis as the election campaign gathers pace.   There are all these politicians making firm commitments for the future.  One promises umpteen  million pounds for the NHS, or for Education, or for affordable homes.  Another says that there’s no way, except by taxation, borrowing or even more savage cuts than we have already experienced, that  that promise can be realized.  One politician is going to give us four brand-new state-of-the-art nuclear submarines (just what you've always wanted?), another a new airport for London, yet another a north/south rail link.

Is it just possible that, perhaps while the election results are still being evaluated, nature will demonstrate its supremacy over all things human and mortal with another tsunami, this one closer to home, a burning all-consuming drought like those recently experienced in Australia, a gale of the strength of the typhoon that recently devastated an island nation in the Pacific, or extreme weather such as they have experienced recently in the USA and elsewhere.

All the party leaders (except perhaps Nigel Farage) accept that climatic change is taking place and that human activity is its principal cause.   They all, again with the exception of Nigel Farage, accept that urgent action is needed – but, as far as they are concerned, not just yet.  They’ll oversee the extraction of the last barrel of oil from bowels of the earth and ruin the countryside by ‘Fracking’ for shale gas, before they take serious steps to find and develop renewable and clean sources of energy, and put combating climate change as the very first item on their manifestos.

I wonder if, when climatic catastrophe strikes, anyone of them will think. ‘That’s exactly what that Green woman, the one with an Aussie accent, what was her name, warned us about during the  election campaign – but at that time we all had much more important things on our minds.

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Week 15 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

Reviving the Poll Tax?

          It was the introduction of a Poll Tax, a government demand for an equal sum per head from every adult without consideration of ability to pay, that provoked the Peasants’ Revolt in the 14^th Century, a revolt that was put down only by the treachery and cruelty  characteristic of rulers in ‘the age of chivalry’.

It was the Poll Tax (the government preferred to call it the Community Charge) that in 1990 finally led to Mrs Thatcher’s downfall as Prime Minister.   She had long promised to get rid of the rating system – raising a proportion of local government finance from a local tax levied on households calculated on their home’s estimated rental value.  It wasn’t popular (no taxation system ever is!) and by the 1980s was out of date. It had been years since there had been a revaluation.   However, imperfect as it was, the rating system meant that there was at least a rough relationship between the amount on the ‘rate demand’ (that was an unfortunate word if there ever was one) and the wealth, or lack of it, of the ratepayer.

            Mrs Thatcher abolished the rates and, as had been promised in her party’s election manifesto, replaced it with the Poll Tax levied equally on every adult resident in every flat, bungalow, dwelling house, mansion, or palace in the local authority’s area.  The rate per head (per ‘poll’) was set by each local authority.  There were modifications.  The unemployed paid only 20 percent of the local poll tax for instance but generally speaking ‘the rich man in his castle’ paid exactly the same as ‘the poor man at his gate’ or in his tied cottage or squalid tenement.  ‘What could possibly be fairer?’ –  that’s what the rich man in his castle asked!

            As in the 14^th century there was fury among the have-nots. There were protests all over the country and, particularly in London, demonstrations that evolved into riots.  Mrs Thatcher faced a revolt from her colleagues in government. She resigned as Prime Minister and Party Leader and was replaced by John Major.  He abolished the Poll Tax and replaced it with ‘Council Tax’, very similar to the old ‘rates’ except that there were ‘bands’ according to the estimated value of the property; undeniably less unfair, though still very generous to those in really palatial homes.

            Now, Lord Warner, a Labour Peer and one time Health Minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government is suggesting something very similar to the old discredited poll tax to fund the NHS which, he says, is facing financial collapse.

            He thinks it would be a good idea if every adult in the country paid £10.00 a month for their ‘membership of the NHS’ and their right to NHS services. He also suggests that adult patients should pay £20 a night for stays in hospital.  There are a number of exemptions including us pensioners!  I’d like to think that this is out of genuine concern for the old and not just because all politicians (including those who have safe seats in the Lords) are aware that it is us greybeards who actually bother to vote at elections.  We’re the ones who can decide election results. 

            Supporters of Lord Warner’s idea say that there’s a black hole of insolvency in the finances of the NHS – and how else is it to be filled?   I believe that this can be done, without reducing anyone into either homelessness or starvation, by using the income tax system.  Income tax is the one form of taxation that, by its very nature, can never reduce anyone to penury.  Thanks to the latest budget no-one whose taxable income is less than £15,000 a year has to pay it at all and even the highest rate taxpayers,  those with a taxable income of £150,000 a year or more, only have to pay in tax 45% of their income above that level.

            First of all I suggest that all state benefits – children’s allowances, disability allowances, job seekers’ allowances, attendance allowances, pensioners’ winter fuel allowances, free tv licences, NHS prescriptions and bus passes be added on to any other taxable income, and income tax at the appropriate rate charged.  The state retirement pension is taxable so why should other benefits be tax-free?    Those with an income below £15,000 a year (and there are plenty of those, both in and out of work) would be completely unaffected by this change.  The rest of us would have to pay a little extra.  I, for example would have to pay income tax at the standard rate on my winter fuel allowance, my attendance allowance (that I get because of my very limited mobility), my free tv licence and an estimate for the cost of my free prescriptions.  I wouldn’t have to pay it on the cost of my bus pass because my mobility is so limited that I can’t use one.  I think that that is all.

            I wouldn’t enjoy paying that extra tax, but it would only be a percentage of my total income and wouldn’t leave me either hungry or homeless.

            It may be that that reform alone would be sufficient to fill the ‘black hole’ in NHS finances.   If not, then an extra penny or two on income tax would certainly be unpopular – but not, I think, as unpopular as the imposition of a new ‘Poll Tax’ on every adult to fund the NHS.

            I am beginning to think that the big divide in our society is not between black and white, between atheists and believers, or even between rich and poor – but between those who believe that ‘fair taxation’ is achieved when everyone, wealthy and poor alike, has to pay the same amount (poll tax, VAT, customs payments and so on) to finance the purposes of central and local government, and those who believe that we should all pay the same percentage of our income   The strange thing is that those who are most opposed to taxation being based on an equal percentage of taxpayers’ income are those who are most insistent on percentage rather than flat rate pay increases!

‘We won’t play with you – so there!’ 

            That childish playground threat came to my mind when I learned from a tv news bulletin that, because of the Ukraine/Crimea crisis, NATO was ceasing all co-operation and ending all communication with its Russian equivalent.   I’d have thought that a time of crisis was just when it was important for the two sides to get together and each try to see the other’s viewpoint.  The Presidents of the USA and Russia have recently had an hour-long telephone chat and their foreign ministers have also met – sadly fruitlessly – but this is the time to try, try and try again!   It is not the time to draw apart, start to mobilise forces, and make vague threats.

            I had feared that, in suggesting that Russia’s claim to the Crimea might have some justification, I was a loan voice crying in the wilderness.  Agreement has come from unexpected areas. In an interview on tv, a right-wing American Republican Senator has affirmed from his visit to the Crimea last summer that most Crimeans were either ethnic Russians or wanted closer friendly ties with Russia.  He fears that NATO is dragging the USA into distant squabbles in which the USA has no interest.  I had thought that Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, was blinded by his Europhobia when he suggested that the EU was partly responsible for the riots in Kiev that had preceded Russia’s recovery of the Crimea. He had even found a kind word to say for Vladimir Putin, the current favourite bogyman of the press. However, a thoughtful email from a regular blog reader has made me wonder.  Here it is:

Crimea is a problem isn’t it?   I do think though there has not been much effort to see it from the Russian point of view. Putin sees the “enemy” – NATO – getting closer and closer – and in the end threatening to take over his main naval base.  The pattern is always the same; first of all the EU woos nations with promises of open markets, infrastructure investment, a stable currency etc.,  and then the NATO boys come in behind and sign them up to an organisation which was actually set up to confront the Soviet Union. So ‘annexation’ without a shot being fired has been a pattern of NATO for the last 2 decades.   As a result the Baltic States which border Russia and have large minority groups of Russian workers, become part of the enemy – in Putin’s eyes. Clearly he could see Ukraine going the same way, and I think he may have been right.  Even the EU trade deals will probably disadvantage Russia by cutting off its access to Ukrainian products.  He probably thinks Belarus might go the same way, leaving Russia isolated economically and militarily.   He comes over as “tough and dictatorial” but do you really imagine he could have secured his Naval bases in the Crimea by negotiation?

On top of that, the “democratic and legal high ground” is not all with the West. After all, the elected government of Ukraine was overthrow.  There has not yet been an election to confirm a new mandate, yet already deals with the EU are being signed. It looks very much as if when the Pro-Russian government came to power, the EU continued its discussions with an opposition that had no legitimacy. They thereby aided and abetted civil unrest. Now that Crimea is not part of Ukraine, remaining Ukrainians will probably vote to go West.  That might not have been the case while Crimea was still part of Ukraine.

  

The most important part of that email is right at the beginning.  No effort whatsoever has been made to see the Russian point of view.  Fortunately we do know how the USA would react under comparable circumstances.  In the Cuban missile crisis the then USSR wanted to put missile launchers on Cuba to protect it from the very credible threat of an invasion from the USA.  There had been such an attempt at the Bay of Pigs, that had been foiled.

            The siting of missiles capable of striking into the heart of the USA was sufficient for President John F. Kennedy to threaten the USSR with armed retaliation and the world with nuclear war.  Fortunately Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet President, was wise enough to communicate with John Kennedy, and to withdraw his missiles; but – no doubt as a result of that friendly chat between the two Presidents – there was no invasion of Cuba.

            ‘Treat others exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated’, is sound advice for Nations as well as individuals.   How many bloody conflicts might have been averted had governments followed that advice!

Late comment

I have this morning (7th April) heard on the tv news that there have been riots in several towns in the Eastern Ukraine.  The suggestion was made that Russian Agents had provoked them.  This just as likely (and just as unlikely) as the suggestion that British and/or American Agents provoked and encouraged the riots in Kiev and elsewhere in western Ukraine that led to the overthrow of the elected pro-Russian President.

I think the situation is a very dangerous one and I hope, for the sake of all of us, that both Russia and NATO will refrain from interfering and from encouraging either side.  Certainly this is not the time for threats or promises of reprisals or other 'consequences'.

           

                                                                              

           

           

           

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Week 30 2013

Tendring Topics………on line

Helping the taxpayers! (but, who are the Taxpayers?)

         

Last week I heard Work and Pensions Minister Iain Duncan Smith defending the Government’s cuts in benefits for the needy and, in particular, the £20,000 ‘cap’ on benefits to any family.   It is clearly unfair, he said, that anyone on benefit should be financially better off than those who are working. He also claimed (without any firm evidence, as a BBC interviewer pointed out) that in pilot areas where the benefit cap had already been introduced, thousands of folk who had been living on benefit had been encouraged back to work.

Obviously, everybody who is able to work should be encouraged to do so – but where are they to find a job when, as in this area for instance, there are twenty applicants for every job vacancy?  Does Iain Duncan Smith really believe that anything other than a tiny minority of the two and a half million unemployed people in the UK prefer to live on ‘benefit’.  Like the tax avoiders and tax evaders, that tiny minority should be exposed and penalised.  Whatever the feature writers of the tabloid press may say, their lives must be pretty miserable, especially when much of that ‘benefit’ isn’t retained by the recipient but is handed over directly to a rapacious private landlord..  But you’d hardly expect a government that includes seventeen millionaires to appreciate that!

Over and over again Mr Iain Duncan Smith claimed that he had to balance the reasonable interests of ‘the taxpayers’ against the cost to the nation of benefit payments.  By the taxpayers he clearly meant those (like me!) who are fortunate enough to have an income high enough to be liable for income tax. But we are by no means the only taxpayers, nor is income tax the only way in which we contribute to the government’s finances   During the Thatcher years (‘the avaricious eighties') there was a deliberate policy of reducing ‘direct taxation’ such as income tax, corporation tax and death duties, and compensating for this by increasing ‘indirect taxation’  (referred to as ‘stealth taxes’ by the tabloid press when imposed by a government that they oppose!) These are VAT, taxes on insurance, gambling and air travel, and customs and excise charges – on, for instance, fuel oil, tobacco products and alcoholic drinks.

This policy was continued by New Labour under Tony Blair and his successors. Indirect taxes are levied equally on rich and poor alike (we’re all in this together’) but, of course, they have a much bigger impact on the incomes of the poor than they do on the rich.

The poor make a contribution to Government’s Inland Revenue whenever they have their cars or motor bikes (often vital for their work or seeking work) repaired, serviced or filled with petrol or diesel; every time they buy a packet of cigarettes or a pint of beer, and every time they buy a lottery ticket in the hope (almost certainly in vain!) of escaping from a life of poverty.

In the Biblical parable ‘the widow’s mite’ was one hundred percent of her wealth, a far greater personal contribution than even hundreds of the shekels of a wealthy Pharisee. Today, as a result of indirect taxation, the working and unemployed poor pay a higher percentage of their income to the Inland Revenue than those in the highest income brackets.

  Pay rises to public servants and to many employees in the private sector are

 always a percentage of their existing income.   When, for instance, all the staff of a local authority get a 2 percent pay rise, Chief Executive Officers can claim that they get exactly the same pay increase as the humblest clerical officer, despite the fact that the CEO is getting 2 percent of perhaps £150,000 and the junior employee 2 percent of less than £20,000!  I wonder if they would continue to equate their loss with that of junior officers if they were compelled to suffer a ten percent pay reduction!

           

I believe, very strongly, that the government’s principal source of revenue should be an income tax consisting, just like those pay rises, on an equal percentage of every adult’s existing income.  I believe too, that every British adult and everyone who lives and works in Britain, should pay that percentage of his or her income as an annual membership fee of the Society of British Citizenship – and that they should be proud and pleased to do so.    

 ‘The Lady’s not for Turning’

          That phrase,  parodying the title of a play of the late 1940s by Christopher Fry, is one of Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher’s best remembered sound-bites.  It was true too.  Mrs Thatcher was very strong-minded (opponents might have said ‘stubborn’ or even ‘pig headed’) and rarely, if ever, changed her mind on a matter of policy.

            The same can hardly be said about her successors in government today..  Their path is littered with the torn-up remains of policies that have either been abandoned or changed out of all recognition. Particularly blatant is their recent U-turn on a minimum price for alcoholic drinks, and the plain packaging of cigarettes.   It seems but yesterday that Prime Minister was making impassioned speeches about the benefits to public health that would result from both these policies and how preventing the sale of cheap alcohol would reduce anti-social behaviour.

            Now, so it seems, the imposition of plain packaging for cigarettes is to await the result of a similar experiment on the other side of the world in Australia (and I thought the coalition government claimed that Britain led the world!) and the imposition of minimum prices for alcohol has been shelved indefinitely.  It is now being claimed that no-one will be discouraged by plain packaging from having ‘that first smoke’ that can begin an addiction.  If the tobacco manufacturers really believe that, then why do they oppose plain packaging.  It must surely be cheaper to produce than packaging currently in use.  This government U-turn will without question result in continued growth in alcohol fuelled  antisocial behaviour, additional cost to the NHS for the treatment of tobacco and alcohol related diseases, and the premature termination of thousands of promising young lives.

            Does the hope of a few extra votes in the no-longer-distant next general election or a few extra thousand pounds in the party war-chest really make all that worthwhile?

‘Council takes stock and turns clock back 30 years’

            That, last week, was the Clacton Gazette’s headline over a news story that gave me real satisfaction and raised by several notches my opinion of the present Tendring District Council.   For years now I have urged that the best solution to Britain’s housing problem – and the best way to get the building industry onto its feet and busy again – was to encourage local authorities to build or purchase houses for letting as they had done successfully for a century prior to Mrs Thatcher’s Right to Buy legislation of 1980.   This had compelled local authorities and Housing Associations (but not private landlords) to sell, at bargain basement prices, the homes that earlier generations had built to solve as they thought their community’s future housing problems.  Right to Buy was, in fact, a very effective means of buying votes with other people’s money.  Better still, those ‘other people’ were no longer around to protest!  They were those of earlier generations who had thought that they were building homes to ensure that no-one in their areas need ever be homeless, overcrowded or living in sub-standard conditions.

            Last year the coalition government made a bad situation even worse by compelling housing authorities to give tenants wishing to buy their homes even bigger discounts.   They also prevented ‘social housing’ from being offered to anyone other than the poorest of the poor, and required that all tenancies should be short term and should be terminated if the tenant’s income rose above the poverty level.  This they compounded with the ‘bedroom tax’ that charges social housing tenants extra rent for any spare bedroom!

            I was therefore delighted to see that, despite all the obstacles, Tendring Council was to go ahead and, for the first time in thirty years, buy homes for letting to needy housing applicants in our area.  They have set aside a million pounds for this purpose.  Their first purchase is to be of six flats in Victoria Road, Walton-on-the-Naze at a cost believed to be about £525,000.   They also have plans to build two council houses in Brightlingsea, and it is expected that more homes for letteing will be built in other towns.   They hope that they will thus raise the council’s existing housing stock to 3,227 homes.  It will, of course, take many years to rectify the effect of three decades of inaction.

              

            Council Leader Peter Halliday is reported as saying, ‘It is fair to say that most people don’t think a Conservative council would want council houses, let alone building or buying to add to housing stock………..We are determined to get local housing for local people, and the only way to do that is to do it ourselves’.

            Good for Councillor Halliday! It wasn’t always the case though that Conservative Councils didn’t want Council Houses.  I was Clacton Urban District Council’s Housing Manager in the early 1970s.  The council owned about 1,000 houses, bungalows and flats and had a building programme adding a few housing units every year.  Clacton Council had a Conservative Majority (though they certainly weren’t run on the parliamentary political lines that central government has forced on councils today) but resolutely refused to sell any of their council properties, though they encouraged and offered support to tenants who bought a house or bungalow in the private sector thereby releasing a council house for letting.

           

Myself as Clacton’s Housing Manager in 1973 or thereabouts. Oh dear, don’t I look every inch the Town Hall Bureaucrat!!

           

The Council's members, of all parties, were proud of their housing estates – and so was I.  Tenants were encouraged to cultivate their gardens and to keep the interiors of their homes spic and span. The knowledge that, provided they paid their rent regularly and complied with the other tenancy conditions, they had homes ‘for life’ encouraged this.   We had two and three bedroom houses and flats for families, specially adaptable bungalows for the disabled or elderly, and a few one-bedroom flats for singletons.   Thanks to the building programme and casual vacancies arising from deaths or tenants moving away, during my time as housing manager no family or individual ever, to my knowledge, ‘slept rough’ within the Clacton Urban District.  Nor did we ever have to resort to ‘bed and breakfast’ accommodation for homeless families.

        Later, when I was Tendring Council's Public Relations Officer, I remember showing with pride a visiting American studying British local government, round one of our Clacton housing estates.  He was deeply impressed.  ‘You wouldn’t find social housing like this in the States’, he told me. That was nearly forty years ago. I haven’t visited any of those estates recently but I have a feeling that nowadays he would find himself to be more ‘at home’.