Property: I won't be able to buy a house until the 22nd century | Matt Mohan-Hickson

They say an Englishman’s home is his castle.
SWEET HOME: Arundel Castle, Matt's new pad... not. Picture: Jamie FieldingSWEET HOME: Arundel Castle, Matt's new pad... not. Picture: Jamie Fielding
SWEET HOME: Arundel Castle, Matt's new pad... not. Picture: Jamie Fielding

And it feels like this phrase becomes more and more fitting with each passing day because we are fast reaching the point where only people with the money to buy a castle will be able to afford to purchase a home.

Or at least it feels that way as a millennial whose prospects for homeownership feel slim to none.

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But don’t go feeling sorry for me, I long made peace with the fact that buying a home might be an aspiration that is out of reach.

Plus, thankfully, we have yet another wealthy privileged person sharing valuable advice on how ‘the young’ can get on the property ladder.

It was Kirstie Allsopp’s turn to dish out the now standard line about how if me and my peers simply cancelled our Netflix accounts we would be able to afford a home.

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I only have an A-level in maths so I am not quite sure exactly how many decades it would take to save up a deposit with the £10 saved from cancelling the streaming services.

Perhaps I’ll get on the property ladder in the 22nd century, at least that is something to look forward to.

As always with these ‘cancel Netflix and the gym’ lines, I am left wondering what kind of Netflix rich people have.

Because they are clearly paying far more than the rest of us normies, perhaps they get sent a platinum encrusted iPad to watch shows on?

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The only way that ‘cancel Netflix’ is a viable solution to the housing crisis must be that they think we are spending hundreds on it each month.

I just wish that when this topic came up in The Discourse, people would offer thoughtful solutions to the problem, policy ideas that could help tackle this serious issue.

Instead it always ends up with finger-wagging and utterly glib suggestions like cancelling Netflix or ‘sacrificing’ cheap holidays.

I didn’t leave the UK for half a decade, I went on no holidays let alone ‘cheap’ ones and yet I do not own a home. Plus, I am not sure how much weight the advice of a baron’s daughter who had ‘family help’ to buy her own home should actually carry.

‘MOVE SOMEWHERE CHEAPER’ ADVICE JUST DOESN’T RING TRUE

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Another one of Kirstie Allsopp’s big pieces of advice for young people looking to get on the property ladder is to ‘move somewhere cheaper’.

It is one of those lines that sounds like solid advice, until you take two seconds to think about it. Sure, perhaps I could squirrel away more money and try to purchase a house in, say, Hartlepool but I work in Portsmouth – that’s some commute.

The reason a lot of young people live in the south-east is because that is where the jobs are – among other benefits of course. You can’t just magic yourself away to a home in a ‘cheap’ area, you need to find a job and that might be easier said than done.

But it made a good headline at least.

WHY CAN’T WE WATCH THESE SPORTS OUTSIDE THE OLYMPICS?

Why are the Winter Olympics so much fun to watch? I guess it is probably the novelty of the event since you don’t get to see the vast majority of the sports on TV (except ice hockey) outside of the games.

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Which is crazy, because so many of the Winter Olympics’ events are so compelling. Speed skating is at once beautiful and fiercely competitive and furiously paced. It has plenty of drama, excitement and is eminently watchable – which is what you want from televised sports. I guess I will just have to make the most of the next couple of weeks.

Especially with the bobsleigh and skeleton yet to start – or the ski-jumping event Eddie the Eagle competed in back in the day.

A message from the editor, Mark Waldron.

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