question...

[sirzap]

Can someone tell me what a "council flat" is?...is this a low income housing apartment? Thanks

[Alan]

Ooh we're not allowed to use such degatory terms in these PC days. "Local Authority Housing" is the preferred term!

Flat = Appartment. Flat brings visions of huge dreary 1960's concrete monstrosities. Appartment smacks of trendy design loft style urban hip living. I have friends who live in appartments who would be very offended if I told them they lived in a flat!

Counil means owned by the local authority government. Publicly owned housing is then rented out to (usually) low income tenants. Since the days of Mrs T in the 80's many council flats have been sold to their tenants who have joined the booming homeowner economy that sees a council flat in Kensington being worth £350,000 on the open market! (see last weekends SUnday Times if you don't believe me.)

Stigma still exists that Council flats and houses are the realm of the low paid and uncultured. (I hasten to add that some of my best friends live in a council house.....................)

HTH,
Alan

[Charles]

Crikey you learn a lot on this forum, and then some more. What's a shanty then? No, not the mariner's love ballad.

[sirzap]

Affordable housing is a huge problem in many places and seems to be a ongoing concern for years to come. Add the lack of a national heath care system here, to the mix and it's a real mess with millions of people left uninsured for illness, who then in turn go to the hospital emergency rooms for treatment, where they cannot be turned away if they are at the poverty income levels and the costs are passed along to the public in higher insurance rates and higher costs for healthcare services, even higher taxes or they incur medical bills that are devastating to a moderate income family’s finances. Sadly home ownership is but a dream for many and not just the working poor.
I came across the term in this article about Andrew Halsey's pacific rowing attempt, that is not going very well at all.

http://www.oceanrowing.com/Andrew_20...28Jan_2003.htm

Cheers...

[sirzap]

What's a chickee? not the little feathered babies either...





Here's a chickee...

[mstacey]

Originally posted by Charles
What's a shanty then? No, not the mariner's love ballad.

Some would say the work songs as sung by sailors on the olde rigged sail ships. The rhythm or beat was supposed to keep the sailors in time when hauling at the ropes, much like the beat of the drum is supposed to keep the marchers of a band in step.
http://www.shanty.org/www.shanty.org/index.html

Could be a Restaurant http://www.theshantyrest.com/

Is it not also something to eat ? I recall the local fishman sells some sort of fish shanty

[Charles]

These are Shanties.....tin ones.

[matiboy]

your mistaken

they are council houses !! LOL

( Just a joke, wish I could benefit from right to buy scheme )