In a breathtaking display of governmental genius, the UK has solved its housing crisis by simply telling university graduates to move back in with their parents. That's right, the strategy to unclog the property pipeline is to cram a generation of degree-wielding adults into their childhood beds, next to the faded One Direction posters and the ghost of their teenage angst. The plan, unveiled by a man who has never had to worry about a deposit because his father owns a small county, is to 'ease the strain on the rental market' by returning the nation's finest minds to the bosom of their families.
This, apparently, is cheaper than building houses. Or shelters. Or even a cardboard box factory.
The logic is so pristine it sparkles. Why invest in infrastructure when you can just regress a generation? Let them live off microwave meals and regret.
Let them endure the weekly interrogation about their 'job situation' while they queue for the bathroom with their father who has discovered a new, terrifying freedom in retirement. This isn't a housing policy, it's a hostage crisis. The government calls it 'temporary intergenerational cohabitation', a phrase that sounds like it was cooked up by a marketing firm that also sells 'luxury detention centres'.
We are one step away from 'returned graduates' wearing ankle monitors and reporting to their local parish council. The real crisis, of course, is not the lack of flats, but the lack of imagination. Instead of building houses, we flatten forests for golf courses.
Instead of affordable rents, we have aristocrats hoarding manors like they're Pokemon cards. But fear not, dear graduate. Your bedroom is waiting.
Your mum has left a plate of digestives and a note about your future. Welcome home, you have nowhere else to go.
