Laying It On Thick

Looking through The Mail among the tales of woe, mystery and disasters was an article telling us that in order to build the houses needed for all those property investing Mail readers, news stands being worth £500 a square foot, 15,000 bricklayers will be needed as of now.

But as British bricks are, well, British, it may not be possible to fly in the men, or women, or uncertain persons from far away because they do not use British bricks there. It is only a matter of hours before someone come up with a new type of National Service, requiring our poor much put upon teenagers to do the business.

There are one or two other snags. One is that bricks are made from certain kind of clay. This means stripping out many fields in a limited number of areas. So much for the rural lands and the beauties of country England. Then more fields are wanted for the houses made of bricks.

Why can't some scientist come up with a way of making building materials out of household waste? Instead of looking for more places for all that waste we have and to avoid burning it and frying the planet, could we make a sort of brick that will do for housing all those property owning peasants that now have the vote?

But when I were a lad, the idea of the people shut away in separate housing units in unwelcoming suburbs flat on the ground was thought to be so out of date. It was the age of Le Corbusier and a ravening horde of architects who wanted to build high with walkways and highways in the sky.

It did look pretty on paper, but sadly, as we know with architects, there was a problem with the costs. Those they first thought of were massively less than those we finished up having to pay. So the high rise things not only often had dodgy foundations, they created a great deal of dodgy debt.

Meanwhile we live in a way our ancestors could never have imagined possible. The young are all supposed to have their own rooms and facilities. The old are separated out, because they tend to smell a bit. The ones in between are entitled to their own separate lives as they wish. 

Our government could go in for central planning on this. But given their form they might well forget the mortar as well as having trowels the wrong shape.

And all bricklayers must be the same height and width.