Editor

As an English journeyman tradesman, I sympathise with John Moss when he pleads the case for second-home owners, for I bought a cottage in the Mumbles 50 years ago, when my Welsh landlady questioned my need for more than one bath a week. However, an increasing number of regions in the world have imposed restrictions on non-local buyers, and for similar reasons to Welsh tourist areas.

Increasing wages would have the same effect as ‘Help to Buy’, or the recent stamp duty ‘holiday’, both of which have caused house price increases in most areas, something akin to ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’. The problem is systemic, and probably started with the Enclosure Acts, which go back centuries, when the ruling classes recognised that production of land had stopped long ago, and barred the commoners from their historic grazing, hunting and crop-growing rights.

And they are still at it, anything collective, or ‘socialist’ as John Moss employs, is anathema to the Tories, which is why Thatcher introduced ‘Right to Buy’, why Cameron and Osborne wouldn’t build council houses, and is perfectly illustrated by Theresa May saying this week that house builders simply will not build more houses ‘if it brings the price down’. It is why ‘Test and trace’ is a privatised, ineffective, centralised system, when everyone is pleading for local NHS units to be utilised. Collectivism inhibits the profit margin.

It took the threat of revolution to kickstart council housing after World War One, and Corbyn’s council house programme was one reason why the 2019 antiLabour media onslaught was four times greater than 2017. That is why I keep asking Cllr Craig ab Iago to explain why there are no rented properties in that Blaenau Ffestiniog Adra development, and I urge him to show some Celtic courage by explaining why the king has no clothes.

Roger Louvet Porthmadog

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