"They own land, give them money - BUT GIVE ME A BIT AS WELL PLEASE!"

There's a splendid summary on David Ireland's blog* of some of the hundreds of millions of taxpayers' finest which the UK government has thrown at the "house builders", ostensibly to help "first time buyers", but as he points out, all that has happened is that construction levels have fallen and "house builders" have booked much larger profits. Which is what you would expect - all subsidies to land ownership go to landowners. He missed off the £80 billion "Funding for Lending Scheme", but hey.

Now, who is this David Ireland chap? He's Chief Executive of the fakecharity "Empty Homes".

And what's their Big Idea..?

The loans fund was one of the demands of Channel 4's “Great British Property Scandal” campaign led by architect and independent Empty Homes Adviser George Clarke. Government operated empty homes loans funds have already been announced in Scotland and Wales, this fund will operate across England.

Loans will be available to pay for works needed to bring empty properties into use. The resultant homes must be affordable. This means that they will need to be let an affordable rent (no more than 80% of the market rent) for at least five years. Homes will also need to be renovated to at least the Decent Homes Standard.

The fund will be run jointly by Empty Homes and a building society. It has been made possible by a grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Empty Homes Community Grants Programme.

In other words, more of the same. He primarily wants to give more taxpayers' money to landowners, ostensibly to help tenants, but applying his own logic, at best this will just push up landlords' profits and at worst achieve nothing. And secondarily he'd like to funnel off a little bit for himself as a commission, of course.

* Via SBC at HPC.