Some time ago, I posted upon the fatuous and puerile suggestion, made by an alleged ‘Tory’ Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, that the Government was proposing that ‘the elderly’ amongst us, who live and have lived in large houses, should be ‘encouraged’ to give up their homes, which of course come with lots of empty bedroom space; so that the ‘underprivileged’ amongst us might gain access to those same large houses and all those empty bedrooms.

Notice the calls by Community Secretary Eric Pickles that ‘Granny Flats’ should be freed from Council Tax so that self-contained ‘annexes’ could be filled by elderly relatives (who are of course literally begging to move in with their reluctant families), and the then-empty houses could be either re-let to the ‘hordes’, or sold off to the newly-buoyant property market?

To my cynical mind, Labour’s Hilary Benn has got it about half right by stating that it is all Tory ‘spin’, as Granny Flats are exempt from Council Tax anyway, if the occupant is over sixty-five, but I fear that this announcement is yet another step along the winding road towards ‘Compulsory Purchase’ of large homes from single people whose only crime is that they have lived longer than their dead husband or wife!

Call themselves F****ing Tories! They all need a short dose of Mme DeFarge’s medicine, and I would volunteer my services to sharpen the blade!