Every night on both my nations’ news: the same bloody crises. In England it’s the cost of energy, rising inflation, the prospect of children going hungry and pensioners dying of hypothermia.
In Ireland it’s the homeless crisis, the housing crisis and the prospect of children starving on the streets and older people dying from hypothermia.
Every night I become more and more furious with our leaders’ unabashed greed and lack of imagination.
Enough already.
Enough.
Screw Blue Sky Thinking and Thinking Outside The Box.
Crush the bloody box, and paint the blue sky blood red.
The Housing and Heating crises that threaten the lives of the most vulnerable require Red Sky Thinking.
We desperately need to recover our collective humanity.
DV presents two temporary drastic uncosted ill-considered ideas to save lives this Winter, and one quiet but vital request.
The Tories fight over how high to pitch the price cap on energy bills, and claim Windfall taxes on energy companies’ profits discourages investment.
Labour promise they would freeze the price caps, and redistribute some windfall taxes to help the poorest.
DV says they're both completely missing the point.
British Gas made a profit of £1.3 billion between January & June.
BP announced profits of £6.95 billion between April and June.
Shell Oil reported profits doubling this year to a record $11.5bn - up from $9.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022.
Never mind capping the cost of energy.
We need to cap the profits energy companies make.
Shareholders can shut their cake-holes for a while, and revert to becoming the investors they used to be.
They can suffer the squeeze of smaller dividends, because if they don’t they’re complicit in the manslaughter of thousands of weaker poorer people.
Cap the profits not the prices.
Redistribute the excess profits and review after 5 years.
Meanwhile here Ireland we’ve totally lost the plot with housing.
It’s impossible to know the true total of homeless people here, because so many are unaccounted, but right now there are 10,049 people in emergency accommodation.
There are 160,000 vacant properties in Ireland, with over 48,000 vacant for six years.
In June 2022 there were a measly 657 properties available to rent in the entire Republic: a drop of 70%.
37 properties were available across the country last month at rents that came within Housing Assistance Payment limits.
There are currently 25,515 AirBnB listings in Ireland, 60 per cent of which are entire homes or apartments.
Of the 23,000 active AirBnB listings in Dublin in 2018, 5,358 were entire homes, while there were just 380 rental properties advertised on Daft.ie.
Analysis of problems caused by AirBnB always focus on the major cities, but AirBnB creates massive housing problems everywhere.
I am only able to live here in Killala because a friend had a vacant outhouse. When I was looking for a place to rent here there were none.
None.
Zero properties for rent, yet hundreds of AirBnB hosts hustling for my business.
We need to get a grip.
We need to temporarily ban all online platforms that offer short-term holiday rentals.
There’ll always be a need for guest houses and B&Bs, so let hosts and customers contact each other by talking on the telephone,
Radical, eh?
For five years you, me, Delilah from Texas and Mikey from Mullingar can live without AirBnB, while we make sure people have homes to live in.
Finally, in a different tone and context, I plead with campaigning politicians of all parties to stop going on about ‘Working Families’ as if they're the only people that matter.
And before I incur the wrath of Daily Mail types (and members of my family) who believe all Left-of-centre people to be ‘scum’; who are, as they read this, straining at the leash to point out that it’s working people who pay the taxes that create the welfare state, I suggest they stay lucky, healthy and able to earn a living.
God forbid they fall on hard times.
Those less able, differently abled, and those unable to find work have to feed their kids too. They have to find homes and then heat them.
Astonishingly, (because you wouldn’t think so, to listen to politicians) they also have the vote. So stop appealing only to ‘working families’, and appreciate that others less fortunate are equally important.
Okay.
That’s the homeless housed, their homes heated and everyone respected.
Feel better now.
My name is Charlie Adley and I am NOT running for president.
©Charlie Adley
28.08.2022
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