Getting down to business the Uppal way

There's a smaller chamber in Parliament in which non-lawmaking debates are held - they can become occasions for the bores and nutters to sound off.

One of them is a certain Mr. Paul Uppal. In the debate on the housing market, he spoke up for the real victims of the minor fall in property prices: institutional investors, who - restrain your tears - have somehow been prevented from entering the residential market.

I have found that institutional investors often look for avenues through which they can get into the residential market, particularly from a letting perspective, and they have often approached Governments regarding the best way to do that. One area that is particularly talked about is the shared ownership vehicle. I do not know whether my hon. Friend, or the Minister later, will be able to comment on that, but I echo the sentiment of shared ownership as a way of solving the problem-not wholly, but certainly helping.

I know that if you're a young worker looking for a mortgage without joy (like me), you might feel that you're finding it harder than MPs who are multimillionaire commercial property developers, but that merely highlights the poverty of your economic thinking.

Even his own side find it ridiculously easy to bat aside his naked self-interest (though to give him some credit, he did actually admit his background this time):

I do not think that my hon. Friend's point, valid though it is, is relevant to that argument.

Doorway, sleeps 2, no mod cons

The BBC is terrified of the incoming Tory government, but I think it's partly responsible for the public's greed and selfishness. Whatever crusty Tory MPs say about liberal bias, daytime BBC TV (and the other channels) consists of property greed, encouraging people to flog their family heirlooms, and talk shows where anything from joblessness to obesity or child abuse are considered to be purely personal failings, with no reference to society at all.

So I was idly daydreaming about a new show…

Opening scene. Man in patched designer suit and designer spectacles held together with sellotape:

"Hello, and welcome to our new show. In the last series, Location Location Location we encouraged smug bourgeois young couples to treat their homes as piggy banks and get into massive debt by speculating on the property market without any regard for fiscal or moral probity. Now, in Repossession Repossession Repossession we're revisiting those couples to see how they've got on in the crash".

Woman in cracked sunglasses trying to yank Primark label off her jacket:
"Yes Jools. We'll be showing them how to hide things from the bailiffs, how to crack the electricity metre, checking out the best homeless shelters in the area, scouting the best restaurant bins, and giving them top tips for building chic, compact homes out of cardboard".

"Thanks Kirsty. And if that's not enough, we'll be inviting our special guests, Tam and Mabel, who've been on the streets since the Tory recession of 1987, to judge our couples on their street skills: bin-picking, skip-diving, shank-making, cider-drinking and self-defence. After all, we don't want them to get a kicking from their former banking colleagues on bonus night, do we?"

"Ha ha, no, we certainly don't Jools. Now, let's meet our teams. In the Salvation Army clothes, it's the Farquhars, who lived in Surrey until yesterday. Team, how are you faring in Peckham?"

And so on. Could be a winner.

World's worst: an occasional series. 1: Kirstie Allsopp

Kirstie is a horrible Tory speculator who made a career on TV encouraging everyone to play the property market.

Last night, slipping in and out of consciousness, I dimly took in Kirstie's Homemade Christmas.

Her recipe: apparently, it's traditional to have a tree in your home at Christmas. Kitchens are popular places for people to congregate. Baubles go on Christmas trees (especially if you shop at Liberty or hand-blow your own glass. The rest of her tips were similarly either hugely patronisingly obvious, or astoshingly smug/expensive/impractical.

My perfect Christmas involves a fire, some real ales, and a wall of books cutting me off from humanity. Balls to Kirstie's glass balls.

Hazel's squirrelling nuts away

Imagine my joy! I've had occasion to take Ms. Blears to task before, so it's sweet to be vindicated. Not only is she a moral and political void, the epitome of mechanoid politics, she's on the take. She's spent nearly £2000 on two TVs - why not a couple of £250 units, Hazel? Perhaps the thinking was that if she bought a 52-inch screen, she could watch her own appearances in life-size!

Worst of all, she's been playing the property market like a Tory, using our money to do places up, then sell them on - claiming on three houses in one year. Clearly Hazel has been using her mega-screen TVs to watch 'Trading Up' or some such evil, Thatcherite programme. I imagine my cousins the weasels are denying any relation to her right now.