Numbers always help - at least a little.

Brian says he reads about "..5,000 nationwide. Not a great deal but could help 5,000 needy families.." It might be assumed he means this number of housholds that collectively earn over the £100k mark.

National bodies cannot agree how many English council homes lie empty.

This seems to vary between 390,000 and 580,00 dependant on how the numbers are reported by individual local authorities. Indeed, what constitutes an empty house is not always consistently applied (this against a backdrop of over 900,000 homes when you add in privately owned properties).

As many as 65-80% of these numbers could be deemed to be long-term empty. Interestingly houses that are beyond repair ar not included.

No matter how you look at it this range of numbers, they dwarf the 5,000 or so occupied nationally by high earners.

Some political mischief is at work here. Why should our focus not be on how we restore and fund the return of the greater number of empty properties to full occupation ?

The effort and resource required to identify, stigmatise and evict these individuals would be massive.

It is hard to believe that reasonable people believe this to be fair and just - but then again if it is to be held that this dogma is right and this political will is to prevail, we are only one step away from insisting that the evicted wear a mark to prevent them re-applying for a home.