In New Labour's Alice in Wonderland world, they've spent 13 years trying to make house prices RISE;  because they think it makes people feel wealthier. When the price of food, cars, DVDs, anything else comes down - we quite rightly feel happy. Why should houses be any different? 

Q. Surely if the value of our house goes down - we're worse off?

A. No because the house is not Money. It's only money when you sell it.

Q.  Then if we move to another house, we will get a lower price for our old house ?

A. Yes - but the NEW house will cost you less as well - so you won't lose anything.

Q,  Who are the losers and winners, when house prices come down?

A.  The big winners are first-time buyers - who can save their deposit quicker and get on the housing ladder. For all the rest of us, it makes no difference, as we sell for less , but then buy at a lower price. The only losers are homeowners who sell, without buying another house (eg to move abroad).   But even they, unless they bought their house in the last few years, are selling for far more than they paid for the house.

Q. Are there any REAL losers when house prices fall?

A. Yes. Speculators, who bought inner-city flats to sell for a quick profit a few months later. They are now getting their fingers burnt.

Q. Should we feel sorry for them?

A. I don't.  Houses are meant to be places to live in - not poker chips for gambling with.    

Q. Some people say the real reason house prices keep rising, is that there aren't enough houses and we need to build more.

A. Correction: The NHBF (National House-Builders Federation) says this. They would. They make their money out of building new houses, and they make the MOST money by building them on beautiful green fields (where they don't have to pay for that messy cleaning-up beforehand) . There are MILLIONS of empty, boarded-up houses which could be done up tomorrow, for living in (One estate in Speke, in Liverpool alone, has got 5,000). 

Q. Is there any way we can reduce the demand for more houses?

A. One way would be to make divorce more difficult, encouraging more house-sharing by couples, rather than one-adult-one-house as now. Obviously if every adult man and woman wants a house TO THEMSELVES - there will never be enough. Another way is to clamp down on immigration pressures- partcularly from illegal immigrants.    

Q. Some people say that deflation (prices falling) is very BAD for the economy, because it makes people put off spending their money, until  the prices have fallen.

A. That's crap. The  economists  who say that are idiots (who are unfortunately in charge of our country). It might be true for Plasma TVs, but most of our spending is on things we NEED. Can you imagine - Mum says 'Let's go to Asda now' - then Dad says 'no, we're not buying any food this week, we'll leave it till next week, because the bill's going to be a  bit cheaper.'      

  A legacy from the Thatcher years is Council Tax. Pre-Thatcher, local authorities got their income from "Rates" - a tax on each house, based roughly on how big the house was. Council Tax is far more complicated because it's, stupidly, based on the market value of the house. This is not only totally different in different parts of Britain (a semi in London is worth far more than a semi in Oldham). Also the values keep changing - so teams of valuers spend their time (and our money), going round re-valuing people's houses.
   We would go for Simple and Sensible: Back to the Rates. You have 5 bands, A to E, depending how many bedrooms there are. A One-bedroom Flat is in Band A; a 3-Bed, in Band C. Five or more bedrooms, and you're in Band E. So the Bands are uniform all over the country. No more valuations. Ever. And with Rates the tax is per household, not per person. (This encourages multi-occupancy, while Council Tax does the opposite and encourages one-person households.)

   But the best way to reduce local taxes is to cut down what local authorities spend. New Labour's forced them to increase spending - by piling up a whole raft of new legislation, making them employ even more form-fillers and box-checkers (most of them to enforce their "politically-correct" fantasies.) We would bin all this new legislation; limiting the activities of councils to the things that they were set up to do in the first place: Schools, libraries and emptying the bins (they don't even do this properly).
   We would BAN Council-house sales. When Margaret Thatcher dreamt up this idea, people warned that, far from increasing the availability of houses to the public, it would end up reducing it. That's exactly what happened. People bought their Council Houses at peanut prices; then sold them at much higher market values; helping to push up all house prices, and fuelling the house-price "boom".
   Meanwhile, those who can't afford to buy, now in many cases can't get council houses either - as the stocks of publicly-owned property has dwindled. Families First would restrict the right to local-authority accomodation to UK citizens ONLY. We would ban councils from using housing paid for by local taxpayers, to house any non-citizens such as asylum seekers or any passing strangers. Such people would have to fend for themselves; staying with friends or family.

    The official Inflation Rate is supposed to tell us how much prices have gone up. But this government (and many other governments do the same thing) fiddles the figure to hide the true inflation rate, by including in the shopping "basket" such "must have" items as Theatre tickets, Plasma TVs,  and DVDs.  We would set up a much more realistic measure of price-rises, a new Inflation Index which includes ONLY  the things we NEED to spend our money on:  Food, Clothes, Rents and Mortgages, Council Tax, Petrol, Gas, Electricity,  Water Rates, Train and Bus fares,  Motor Insurance, and so on.

    Everyone knows the difference between the most wealthy, and the poorest, people has increased during New Labour's 13 years' rule. But has poverty increased?  The government's own definition of who is 'Poor' is stupid, because it defines as poor anyone earning less than a third of the average wage. By that definition, if the average wage shoots up tomorrow to £ 3 Million a year - people earning a million pounds a year will count as 'poor' !   Using a 'Relative' definition of poverty like this is stupid. All of us who remember childhoods in the 1950s and 60s, know that the British people were far, far poorer in those days; which means that poverty must be much less now in the 21st century, than it used to be.  We would bring in an 'absolute' definition of poverty, for example defining people as poor if they never have any holidays, don't have a computer , can't afford to buy meat, wear only second-hand clothes and so on.