I agree with you about unstable jobs and the need to be mobile in this era. How do you commit to a house in the present climate given the state of the economy. But at what cost does this come at? Being mobile, not having roots not having a place to call “home”, how do you build security for yourself financial or otherwise.

Things are changing and not for the better. What quality of life is that stuck out on the fringes.

I think we have made a monumental mess of housing, and a certain amount of that has to be laid at the door of the council-house sell-off plus the reckless lending/borrowing (takes two to tango…) of the past decade.

Mind you, I’ve also long held ‘unfashionable’ views on social housing, in that I believe it should be stop-gap, emergency provision ONLY and not ‘for life’. Surely there comes a point when the blue-collar aspirations pay off, and when there is a satellite dish, caravan, boat and three cars clogging up the drive, it is time to forego the subsidised rent, move on into the ‘real’ market and free up property for the next generation of struggling youngsters. When I was younger, I always used to joke that you can identify the working classes by the fact they have more disposable income than the middle classes. Now I think that’s how you identify the so-called ‘underclass’.

I agree with Dreamer’s point about the costs of being ‘mobile’ – although it may be partly the age thing, but I personally value roots and stability and a bit of soil to sink my toes into. I’ve always resented the idea of this enforced ‘mobility’ or ‘labour-force flexibility’ typified by the Chingford bike-wallah back in the ’80s. We’re letting the labour-market tail wag the social-structure dog. It all contributes to the atomisation of society, destruction of communities and gutting of locations, and feeds the acquisitive and trivia-obsessed simulacrum of culture we see around us. And of course it has all been made possible by our economy of cheap fuel which will soon be going away for good.

Part of the housing mess is that we no longer live where we work – we build houses where there is no industry, and site jobs away from the workforce and the customers. I don’t think we will ‘row our way back’, we’ll have to simply flounder about until a saner pattern of settlement re-emerges from the coming energy constraints.

The finacialised view of home-ownership (‘property is an investment’) is whacko IMHO, a house is worth a house, ie somewhere to live. Its notional ‘value’ in an ‘ever-rising market’ is not something that should be relied upon (and certainly not a basis for ever-extending secured credit!) It’s a classic example of confusing price with value – in housing these two only ever coincide at the point of sale. If you are not selling your house then its value is that you have a roof over your head. This value does not change, no matter what prices do, unless you are actually selling. The only way to credibly alter the *value* of a house is to make physical alterations, ie make it a roof that covers more heads, or that uses less energy, or encompasses other forms of real yield. Somewhere along the way, housing migrated from the primary economy to the tertiary economy – this needs to be reversed, becuase most tertiary products are not suitable for private investors

In principle I don’t have any problem with banks contacting customers about their spending — it’s a private matter between suppliers and customers.

Some years ago there was an alleged transcript from a corporate IT helpline circulating which, after many attempts to get to the root of the customer’s problem, ended by the company rep advising the customer to return his computer to the shop with the words “I am too f***ing stupid to own a computer”.

It’s hard, in my opinion, to apportion blame to banks and customers beyond 50/50 for the subprime fiasco, except to say that capitalism can only work benignly in a law governed society and that includes appropriate regulation.