Nobody should pay more than 40% of their income on rent
Had this conversation in the pub last tuesday and everyone agreed which is rare because Geoff disagrees with everything on principle but even Geoff thinks rent is out of control. If youre spending more than 40% of your take home pay on keeping a roof over your head something has gone properly wrong and you cant save and you cant go out and you definitely cant buy a house which is the thing everyone keeps telling you to do instead of renting. Cap rent at 40% of the local median income for the property size. Landlords wont like it but landlords also charge twelve hundred quid a month for a flat with mould in the bathroom and a boiler from 1997 so I think they will survive.
Energy companies shouldnt make record profits while people cant heat their homes
British Gas made 750 million in profit in the first half of 2023.
In that same period millions of people were choosing between heating and eating.
If you cant see the problem with that sentence I dont know what to tell you.
This isnt complicated. If you provide an essential service and you are making record profits while your customers are in fuel poverty you should be required to freeze bills until that gap closes.
If shareholders dont like it they can invest in something that doesnt involve profiting from peoples inability to stay warm.
I am genuinely angry about this one.
Bring back the local pub as a funded community hub
Pubs are closing at something like 50 a month and I know people say well thats just the market but these arent just places that sell beer are they. In a lot of villages the pub is literally the only place people actually meet each other face to face and once thats gone you have got a community where nobody talks to their neighbours and loneliness gets worse and the nearest social space is a Costa in a retail park 6 miles away which isnt the same thing at all even if the coffee is better than what Gary serves which it is to be fair.
Give community pubs the same tax breaks we give village halls. Stop approving planning to turn them into flats.
This policy was developed over three pints and a packet of scampi fries and I stand by every word.
MPs who vote on housing policy shouldnt be allowed to own rental properties
Quick one this. Something like a third of MPs own rental property on top of their own home. When those same MPs vote on housing policy, tenants rights, landlord tax — they are literally voting on their own income.
Imagine if doctors were allowed to approve their own pay rises. Imagine if the head of a pharmaceutical company sat on the panel deciding which of their drugs the NHS should buy. You would lose your mind. And yet the housing thing just gets waved through as if its totally normal.
Here is the policy. If you are an MP and you own rental property, you have to either sell it, transfer it to a blind trust, or recuse yourself from every housing vote for the entire parliament. Pick one. This isnt anti-landlord. Its anti-conflict-of-interest.
Geoff thinks this will never pass because the people who would need to vote for it are the exact people it would inconvenience, and he is probably right, but at this point I would settle for the conversation happening out loud.
Hold at least one council meeting a month in a pub. Yes really.
Went to a council meeting last week. They held it in a community centre on the edge of town at 2 in the afternoon on a wednesday. Eleven people attended. Four of them were the council. Two were press. Three were retired. One was me. One was a bloke who had wandered in thinking it was a carpet bowls club.
Now before anyone says "thats democracy for you mate", I want you to consider something. On a friday night our local has thirty people in it, all of whom have opinions, and most of whom have more to say about bin collections than the actual councillor who is technically responsible for bin collections.
The problem isnt that people dont care about local issues. The problem is that local government conducts itself in rooms nobody wants to be in, at times nobody is free, in a format that makes even interesting topics feel like wading through porridge.
Here is the proposal. Every month, hold at least one council meeting in an actual public space where people actually are. A pub function room. A community hall on a saturday morning. The back of a cafe. Not the main council business, fine, keep that official. But a properly warned and minuted "surgery" type meeting where councillors have to sit there with a pint and explain their decisions to whoever shows up.
Pushback will be "but its unprofessional" and "but the decisions need to be formal". Grand. Those points are noted. The decisions are currently being made by eleven people in a community centre at 2pm on a wednesday and nobody else has any idea what they are. I think unprofessional is a risk worth taking.
Geoff says he would attend any meeting that served beer. I believe him. I suspect he isnt the only one.
What do you think?
Vote on individual policies, adapt them, or write your own alternative. Good ideas should be tested.