A landlord’s lot
Victor Parks (MetroTalk, Tue) says he would like to see a legal clause that holds landlords responsible for their tenants’ behaviour. This is impractical.
It would place landlords in the shoes of law enforcement agencies who are legally responsible for breaches of peace and other antisocial behaviour.
As it is, landlords face 170 separate laws and regulations, not only at the time of commencement of tenancies but throughout. All for a modest average UK yield of 4.7 per cent gross for accepting a huge number of risks on their properties.
I am a landlord. I am not surprised that the landlords are leaving the sector – not quite in droves, but in significant enough numbers at a time when there isn’t enough public sector housing to replace our properties.
Landlords as a species would naturally die out if there was sufficient and high-quality public housing for the asking.
I invite Victor to step in my shoes and see for himself how impractical his proposition is.
We would all like to have angelic tenants on our books but the reality is that they are angelic at the commencement of the tenancy but not necessarily so later on.
We cannot control our tenants’ behaviour. We neither have the means nor are rewarded for doing so. So, if I throw out a tenant for alleged nastiness to neighbours, who pays?
Landlords do not have a duty of care to the wider community and for a good reason. As it is we supply services that immigration authorities, financial services authorities, local authorities and many such bodies ought to carry out for themselves – and all for no remuneration.
Being a private rented-sector landlord is generally a bad idea and many of us are asking, ‘Why am I doing this?’
METRO TALK – HAVE YOUR SAY
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Robert Hughes (MetroTalk, Fri) says landlords are leaving the market at a time of considerable demand for rental housing. He makes a case for the restoration of full tax relief on financing costs for their properties.
He points out that previous governments have treated them as investors rather than businesses and denied tax relief for those costs largely on that basis.
It is worth pointing out that governments have also treated commercial landlords as investors, yet they allow full tax relief for financing costs against rental profits for those landlords. Given the clamour for residential properties and the number of commercial properties lying empty, one wonders if it is time for a change of policy.
Whether it would have the effect put forward by Mr Hughes I do not know but it has to be worth a try if for no other reason than to put an end to an inequitable situation.
MP Diane Abbott’s comment about her being treated as a ‘non-person’ by Sir Keir Starmer (Metro, Wed) is one of the reasons why the Labour Party will never again get my vote, under its present leader.
The veteran MP said she was ‘frightened’ after businessman and Tory donor Frank Hester said looking at her ‘made you just want to hate all black women’ and that she ‘should be shot’.
Ms Abbott said Sir Keir ‘never reached out to me’ in the aftermath of the comments earlier this year.
And while she has been treated shamefully by the Labour Party she is not the only MP to have suffered this indignity. Several Labour MPs have had the whip suspended because of their so-called ‘left-wing’ views.
Even former leader Jeremy Corbyn was booted out over his response to findings of antisemitism within the party.
This purge of the left wing very much reminds me of the Senator Joseph McCarthy vicious hunt for ‘reds under the beds’ in 1950s America.
For much of my life I voted Labour because I thought that they were a broad church and a political party that stood for diversity of opinion, tolerance and fairness. I no longer believe this to be the case under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.
Managing mental health
I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew McLuskey (MetroTalk, Mon) that we need to grow our social care provision with revenue from wealth taxes as part of necessary reforms to the NHS.
Another way we could save money would be to further merge mental health with the rest of the NHS. As far as I can see, mental health is only managed separately because it always has been, going back to the era of lunatic asylums.
Many psychiatrists support combining mental and physical health care services – and it makes sense medically, given how much we are learning about the links between mental and physical health.
By putting them both under one roof, we will have fewer managers, more frontline staff and a more efficient system.
Given that a round of new hospitals are supposed to be on the way, now should be an ideal time to make this change.
The only thing that’s stopping this from happening seems to be a lack of political imagination.
New specs? At least PM can see why we must aid Ukraine
To further respond to Owen (MetroTalk, Tue), who suggests ending British assistance to Ukraine as, in his words, it is a war that Russia cannot lose and is nothing to do with us.
He says the £12.7billion we have pledged would be better spent in paying for the £1.to be 3billion saved by limiting the winter fuel allowance.
This is a pernicious point of view and l suggest he looks up the history of appeasement to Hitler in the late 1930s – it didn’t end well.
It is directly in ours and Europe’s interests to keep bleeding Russia, which is now a properly fascist state bent on restoring the Soviet empire/greater Russia, however long it takes. China is much the same. If we allow Ukraine to be conquered and violently erased as a nation then the Baltic states will be next and war with Nato will follow.
Because we have nuclear weapons the war will not escalate into armageddon, a fact that grey-haired CND supporters might wish to consider, but it will still be pretty grim.
Far better to aid the Ukranians who are bravely shedding their blood and ignore the siren calls of Donald Trump and the far right to negotiate a surrender. To his credit, Sir Keir Starmer sees this clearly – perhaps it is his expensive glasses that help.
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