Howard Davies criticised as being ‘out of touch’ as number of first-time buyers is at lowest level in a decade

The chair of NatWest has claimed it is not “that difficult” to get on the property ladder, despite the number of first-time buyers with a mortgage falling to the lowest level in a decade.

“I don’t think it is that difficult at the moment,” Sir Howard Davies told the BBC.

Pressed about this assertion, he added: “You have to save, and that is the way it always used to be.”

His comments to Radio 4’s Today programme follow a report published earlier this week by Yorkshire Building Society, which found that the number of first-time buyers who bought a home with a mortgage fell to the lowest level in a decade in 2023.

  • rayquetzalcoatlEnglish
    17·
    11 months ago

    I guess, personally, I just feel like a lot of these incredibly rich and obviously out of touch old men are just totally irrelevant to normal daily life for most people. It’s pointless to publish news like this, because it’s just obviously meant to rile people up in some vague way and I guess somehow that generates money for the Guardian?

    I just don’t understand why we have to hear about what these irrelevant, hopefully soon-departed losers think. Who cares?

    • JoBoEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      Because these are the people who rule over us. With all the information in the world at their fingertips, they remain willfully ignorant. Apparently unable to recall what they pay their cleaners or work out what annual salary the minimum wage equates to.

      Meet the rich

      How much, we asked our group, would it take to put someone in the top 10% of earners? They put the figure at £162,000. In fact, in 2007 it was around £39,825, the point at which the top tax band began. Our group found it hard to believe that nine-tenths of the UK’s 32m taxpayers earned less than that. As for the poverty threshold, our lawyers and bankers fixed it at £22,000. But that sum was just under median earnings, which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay.

      Mistakes such as these should disqualify the wealthy from pontificating about taxation or redistribution. And yet City views carry great weight with ministers and politicians of all parties.

      Neither the Guardian nor Polly Toynbee are agitating for revolution, of course. They cling to the belief that information will solve everything. They’re liberals, it’s what they do.

      But they’re right, we should be angry. And the abject ignorance of the very wealthy should be highlighted at every opportunity. These are not credible people and their lack of credibility matters.