monday morning (and the launch of the good ship week)

horsemouth is fortunate. he starts the week with a meeting (and thus it looks lie he is living a useful life/ engaged in meaningful activity). he'll walk over in a bit. 

the smell of tomcat spray or fox shit comes in the window (stinky beasts).

horsemouth has sent an envelope full of shit to the government - though not for the reason you first might expect from him. it's part of a clinical screening survey for older men to try and detect bowel cancer from the microscopic amount of blood in the poo. anyway he does hope he got enough poo on their shitty little plastic stick to enable an accurate diagnosis. (horsemouth is a clean living beast these days he's got no fears of contraband being detected). now all horsemouth has to do is to go and get his blood pressure measured/ remember to inquire if there's the possibility of a covid/ omicron jab and a flu jab and engage with the increasing medicalisation of the old. 

horsemouth is rolling towards sixty and his bus pass. in health terms he has a little arthritis (this might necessitate some changes in playing styles) and weak(ish) lungs that require him to be careful in cold weather. other than that he's pretty ok. 

this week a walk with TG and a walk with ayesha (for sure). 

greg clark, the housing secretary, has said social landlords will be limited to an annual rent increase of between 3% and 7% for the next one or two years. now the state would normally (mostly) cover the inflationary increase in the rent bill through universal credit (whether people are in work or not) but by limiting what social landlords can charge they are in fact bouncing paying for those inflationary increases in costs onto the social landlords. 

the government  did a similar thing a few years ago where they forced social landlords to reduce rents by 1% a year for 5 years - this reduced this portion of the benefits bill but also the surpluses and the reserves of social landlords and their ability to either build new social housing or fund repairs and improvements  to their existing stock. (horsemouth realises that sympathy for the landlord is not a popular view but there it is). 

faced with their own inflationary pressures social housing landlords are driven to develop more property for sale or at commercial rent to meet the shortfall. but even this requires confidence that conditions will be predictable and that greg clark wearing a dracula costume will not suddenly emerge from behind a rose bush to suck their blood.

after the increases in electricity and gas costs this winter (and probably next winter) social housing tenants not on universal credit or whose payments are capped will not be best placed to pay a rent rise. these rent rises will hit in april for most tenants.

if it's  7% it makes little odds (it may as well by the customary CPI (inflation) + 1%) it's unpayable, but even if it's 3% it's probably still unpayable. inflation (the headline rate is currently running at about 10%) hits the poor much harder, power cost hikes hit the poor much harder (because they are mainly on key meters).