Nov 9
Home is where the heart is
As I write, the television is on, and there is one of those many programmes on telling us all about the tricks of buying and selling a home, not to mention how to design it, make it more appealing, etc. There has been an enormous upsurge of this sort of programme in recent years. Such programmes are cheap to make, and I find a lot of this sort of stuff rather dull. On a more positive note, though, all these programmes ram home the message of how important ownership is to Brits, and indeed to everyone. The pride in making a bit of brick and mortar look better is so ingrained into British culture that it almost silly to point it out.
And that love of ownership ought to be ever present in the minds of any savvy politician. “An Englishman’s home is his castle” is not just a sentimental piece of patriotic doggerel, it goes to the heart of a liberal civil society. So maybe all those Guardianistas at the BBC making property programmes are unwittingly helping the cause of property rights after all.
