Questioning the Right.

I had a letter from the house agent today telling me he was putting the rent up. I did a simple calculation on my trusty calculator and found that the amount he was putting it up by was substantially greater than the inflation we’ve had since the last increase.

But of course, landlords and agents don’t take inflation into account when determining increases. They base it on current market norms. And who sets the current market norms? Landlords and agents do. How very convenient.

And so the landlords and agents get fatter and the poor tenants pay for it. Or, to put it more generally, the rich get richer on the back of the poor. It’s a simple example of the free market principle at work.

Now, if I were an American making this post, I’ve no doubt there would be plenty of my fellow Americans who would froth at the mouth and call me a ‘commie bastard’ or a ‘commie lefty’ or simply ‘damn commie.’ (I read a tweet recently in which one of those phrases was used of a newly-elected member of Congress because a film had emerged of her dancing back in her student days. It appears there’s a particularly enlightened brand of Republican who thinks that only dastardly Democrats and covert Communists dance.) And I’d lay odds-on that most of those who favour such calumny haven’t a clue what Communism actually is. It’s simply become a synonym for ‘undesirable.’ There goes that good old free market propaganda doing its job again.

I’m not a Communist because I’m not an anything-ist. I don’t join clubs. But I do like to keep an open mind because I find it’s the best route to understanding. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get the house agent to scale down the rent rise. It’s not about equality; it’s about egalitarianism.

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Incidentally, my nightly need of a House fix is throwing up an interesting query. Do American doctors really assume the right to break into patients' houses in order to rummage through their bathroom cabinet? Dr House's team do it as a matter of routine.