Here’s a part of what’s gone wrong with to-the-nth-degree privatisation. What used to be council housing has for some time been social housing, which means it’s owned, in many cases, by investment funds. Here’s one, a ‘REIT’ (Real Estate Investment Trust) looking to sell its ‘portfolio’, which comprises houses and flats for the poor and vulnerable. All talk is of yields, bad debt ratios and retenanting, and much of the fault lies, as with sewerage in our rivers and G4S prisons, in the assumption that the private sector can be allowed to get on with it and that ‘market efficiencies’ will make it all work. They won’t and they don’t.
“Cash ISA allowance could be cut this month”
Our mantra has long been ’straightforward advice that you can understand’. That can mean trying to simplify the many complex products and options with which the world of finance tries to befuddle its target audience.
