National Stereotypes

Here's an amusing extract from but she's a girl blog, and there is a ring of truth. Maggie Thatcher generally gets blamed for the new wham-bam-thank-you-mam British attitude especially in the construction/property and estate industry. She's also blamed for the increase in the number of tenants who couldn't afford to get onto the property market, with the correspondng boom in landlords, the new multi-millionaires who also hold down professional jobs like accounting,nursing and teaching. The craft had been taken out of craftsmanship.I would tend to agree with the commentator who said:

"I suspect that our many years of tutelage under Margaret Thatcher may have had something to do with this.Or, more generally, the way in which our economy has developed over the last several decades. I remember my father describing his time as an engineering apprentice - when apprenticeships were something to be aspired to. Contrast this to more recent ‘innovations’, particularly things like the YTS scheme, and you’ll see that there’s been something of a shift in the Zeitgeist. Apprenticeships were something to be pursued, YTS schemes, which as best I can tell were a wholesale disaster, were foisted on young men and women who really didn’t want to work a dead-end job for dead-end pay.

I think these sort of economic and political changes go some way towards explaining the national spirit … sadly. "

The piece describes the construction of a Huf Haus.

The Huf Haus looks great but these modernist structures tend to last for only 40 years after which most modernist homes need to be replaced.