Hi. Weve been unable to afford a house for 12 years.
The reasons for rising prices are always shrouded in mist in the political/media debate.
In his 1997 budget, Brown abolished dividend tax credits on pension funds. Companies saw the writing on the wall and immediately ended their final salary pension schemes to new employees shortly after the 'Brown raid'. They also started to cut down on the number of people with long final salary pension service and worked towards ending a scheme which would no longer be viable.
- The CBI opposed Browns Tax credit cuts. Even the treasury and No.10 opposed them. [But Brown made the cuts anyway.]
2.] By abolishing the pensions tax credit, the yield for institutional funds across the entire market fell by 20 per cent. Few people outside the City understood the change and hardly any MPs protested. But Whitehall papers produced under the Freedom of Information act showed that Mr Brown was warned by his officials and by the Treasury that there would be dire consequences.
They warned it would wipe £50bn off the value of funds, and that shares could drop by up to 20 per cent and public sector pensions would need topping up. [Brown chose to ignore this warning]
- The value of pension funds have since lost around £5bn per year since the 1997 tax relief cuts. Pension funds holding the cash that almost everyone in the country had planned to use for our retirement have lost around £100 billion over the last 12 years.
3.] The advice Brown was given by this Treasury Paper, in 1997 was as follows:
'The changes in incentives are likely to lead to substantial changes in portfolios. Pension funds will find equity relatively less attractive, and will prefer other assets ? particularly interest bearing securities and foreign equity ? and may also be prompted to consider more direct property investment.'
Those funds were then channelled into fuelling an unsustainable property bubble, BTL portfolios, which developed because of Labours complete lack of regulation of the Banks.This was followed by ever increasing toxic mortgage debt, and this was followed by the bank bailouts.
This is just one example of Gordon Browns incompetent decision making which helped to create the cornerstone of the debt bubble.
4.] In the ten years previous to Browns Raid on pensions, From 1987 to 1997 the Average House Price rose from £40k to £55k.
A 33.3% rise over ten years.
From 1997[post tax dividend cuts] to 2007, the Average House Price rose from £55k to £190k [Nationwide Building Society figures]
A staggering 245% increase over the same period. [Ten years.]
The UK debt bubble stopped inflating at the end of 2003.
But then, Chancellor Brown removed housing costs from the inflation index (in December 2003, from RPI to CPI), despite Bank of England's opposition, to force the Bank to keep interest rates low. Too low.
The UK should not be facing the debt we are facing, and The Labour Party are guilty of gross fiscal mismanagement and criminal negligence.
Raise IR to protect the pound and bring housing back to being affordable once again.
Why should a younger generation pay for your debt?
Whilst keeping your house prices artificially inflated?
We are in effect paying for your houses, whilst being unable to afford our own. That is called Indentured slavery.
We have already been forced to waste tens of thousands in rent over the last nine to ten years.
We are being forced into Debt Bondage.
Our generation WILL hold Brown responsible. Many hundreds of thousnads of disenchanted people, priced out of houng for a decade are looking at the Lib Dems.
The Tories, are only interested in making the 'debt more affordable to pay,' as a pose to tackling the debt itself.
What we need to do is to educate people as to the disastrous reign of Labour.
Tell the people about the debt transfer. Tell them how UNFAIR this is.