IT WAS reported in the SNJ a few weeks ago that Shelter (a very responsible organisation) had forecast that in a few years’ time a couple would need a regular income of £51,000 per annum to get on the housing ladder and sustain a reasonable comfortable mode of life.

This bodes ill for a large proportion of future generations – one can envisage a large increase in the numbers of people ‘travelling’ and an increase in the number of official trailer parks and who will be happy to tolerate those?

Years ago I boarded a plane in Milan and found myself sitting next to a total stranger, in conversation he told me that he lived in Wotton under Edge, it transpired that he knew people and circumstances in Wotton of which I knew, we hit it off.

He told me that he had spent his life as an artisan in the building trade, working for a local entrepreneur, not one of the really big boys but not one of the small timers either.

In a quiet moment his employer had confided in him that every third house built by his firm was ‘pure profit’ which seems an astonishing admission and an astonishing profit.

I do admit that the expression ‘pure profit’ is slightly ambiguous, but the question could arise, how many houses does a building entrepreneur have to build today before the next one becomes ‘pure profit?’ I am sure that one of our building moguls will provide us with an answer which may help to explain the insane cost of ‘four walls and a roof’, a cost which so completely demoralises so many of our younger generation.

Cyril Govier

Stonehouse