Fri 8 Aug 2008
Seeing is believing
The great line I hear from the building experts, employers and unions, as land and housing construction crashes through zero, is: ’Of course I could see it coming.’So, if they were that smart, why didn’t they do something about it? Why didn’t they, as a group, work together and try to protect the industry they worked in?
I think it’s because the people running the industry don’t have the foresight to plan ahead. Like many managers in this country, they can only think within the ‘safe’ zone, very often because they’ve filled ‘dead men’s shoes’ as they’ve progressed up the corporate or union ladder. Northern Rock – couldn’t manage a piss-up in a brewery – need I say more. Unfortunately, they, and many other managers walk away with millions of our money after they’ve spectacularly failed (local government and quangos being prime examples). Surely the first rule of business life should be that managers and staff don’t profit from failure.
We, the shareholders and taxpayers, don’t profit when things beyond our control go wrong, so why should they?
Although we are all now riddled with economic pain and uncertainty, the present situation could be a great opportunity to put things right.
I wrote a year ago, in Show House, that: “The future of a constant property market has to be in sustained building at low and efficient costs. Either accept that or live in a boom and bust market in which the senior management do “very well thank you”, but the normal person in the street has no recourse as the market crashes up and down.”
“The market has to collapse at some stage. The very wealthy will still be immune and able to pay high prices, but the majority will not, with a huge gulf between the haves and have nots.”
“Once the market says we cannot afford to build because of crazy prices, that is when the revolution will start. There comes a point when a big company, through its sheer size, becomes unsustainable. We need to bring things back to local level, employing local labour, making homes cheaper to build and more affordable.”
Now, I’m no Nostradamus, but I think I have a modicum of common sense. I’m also a Thatcherite, which means I believe in enterprise and initiative, but not in total greed. She didn’t invent greed when she was Prime Minister; she simply gave us the base from which we could build our economy and improve our lifestyles. The greed came from the corporate-climbing no-goodniks who simply stuck their snouts into the trough the good managers, risk-takers and honest you-and-me shareholders helped fill with hard earned-money.
I happen to believe in social and natural justice and people power. I think that’s what Thatcherism was about.
Many of those who have taken the base of what she gave us have unfortunately used it to further their own nests at the costs of ordinary people. And I also include the shabby construction workers who charged ludicrous amounts and gave me fifth-rate work in return. I’m suing one of those companies right now.
I also tend to put my money where my mouth is. Which is probably why I’m not a billionaire. I take risks that go wrong. But they’re my risks. One of those risks was to build 44 green and affordable homes in Wiltshire with NHBC guarantees. These homes are better than many homes being offered at almost twice the money, with a third less space and no eco-credentials by the big expert housebuilders who are now going bust.
The truth is building homes is not a complicated business. We’ve been doing it since before man invented the wheel. Okay, things were simpler then; you just grabbed some branches and made a roof for protection. But that instinct for shelter has been used to good effect for more than ten thousand years.
With the advent of new technology we should now be building better, more sustainable and cheaper homes than 50 years ago. But, in my view, big business has conned us with the unions and government to keep prices high. That keeps the profits up and idiots like us, the public, buying the other idiots, the excessive profit makers and idle workforces, out of trouble. And why do I include our representatives, the government, in all this? Because they’re part of the scam.
I’ll give you an example. I went to Housing Minister Caroline Flint, and before that her predecessor, and offered to build two hundred homes which bordered on Code 4, were highly affordable and better than most people’s homes that cost twice as much. Neither were they piddly little dark homes crammed together. And they had common grass spaces for allotments and other shared amenities. All we wanted from them was a few acres (like an unused military camp area) for which we would pay. We also offered to rebuild some of the dank and decaying buildings that our service families and heroes are forced to live in for cost.
The Minister sent her two top sustainable experts along. These were guys at the centre of her policy team.
They raved, and I don’t use that word lightly, about our product. They said it answered most of their questions. ‘It was the way to go’, they said. ‘There is nothing else like it on the market’, they added. And it would create a host of local jobs.
Have we heard anything since?
No.
Except that they wanted us to spend £6,000 per house on getting an energy certificate. We gave up in the end. I mean, do these people really care?
Then there is the media. Mostly I have to say, the TV companies. They make celebrities out of people like the guy who fronts ‘Grand Designs.’ He, who tries to look like a hybrid of Indiana and Tommy Lee Jones.
His latest TV venture was to build an eco-sustainable house in five days.
Come on. I wish most buildings could be built under shelter, in perfect conditions, with everything pre-planned and put out on site ready when you needed it, with all wood cut to size and a workforce who just love being on the telly. No mud, no cranky delivery men, no slashing rain and eye-blistering wind. It all appeared so easy that I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon get a Celebrity-put–up-a-house-in 50-minutes reality show with blind workmen and one-legged scaffolders.
This is not the answer to our problems. Anymore than ‘Location, Location, Location’ is. It’s interesting watching that show being put out as it was made before the credit crunch. Totally out of touch with what’s happened. Our lives are now being planned and executed by ratings-hungry TV producers and celebrities. No wonder the government has no idea what to do.
The logical move when in deep trouble is always to get back to basics.
The first rule must be to house and shelter people; not just the poor or disassociated as we’re constantly being told; but those same people who are actually our neighbours, our workmates, the parents of those out fighting our wars in the East.
We can build affordable homes. We can sustain them. We can heat them in a way that safeguards our planet without having to shred the New Forest every three years to feed our wood-burners as the experts would have us do.
All this can be achieved relatively simply. And if we are to give our neighbours the homes they deserve, then we must strip away the bullshit that surrounds construction and get back to building homes in a simple and effective manner.
The first step should start with managers and companies who actually care about the people they build houses for.
Either that or put them into a show called ‘I’m a developer, get my snout outta here.’ And let the Indiana Jones look-alike loose with his bull whip.
Now, that’s a show I’d watch.