Welcome back to another of my Saturday morning explorations of words and phrases I’ve noticed creeping into wider use over recent months and years.
Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008, and particularly since the accession to power of the cruellest and most uncaring government of my lifetime in 2010, we’ve got used to many new concepts (and thus words) entering the language: AUSTERITY – which was supposed to be a way of reducing government debt through massive cuts to the public sector and to welfare spending, but which in fact resulted in a massively increased debt and huge amounts of money being sucked out of the public purse into private pockets; ZERO-HOURS CONTRACTS; PRECARITY (a state of persistent insecurity with regard to employment and income); FOOD BANKS and much more. However, one of the most disgusting words to have entered the language is POOR DOOR.
Under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, councils were encouraged to sell off their stock of social housing and to stop spending money building more. What was sold to people as a way of encouraging home ownership very quickly led to a chronic shortage of affordable housing, social cleansing of once diverse areas, and more and more property concentrated in the hands of a small number of incredibly wealthy landlords.
Over the last ten years or so, there has been some small attempt to rectify this mess and property developers building apartment blocks were required to provide a small amount of "affordable housing" if they wanted to get planning permission. Shockingly, it then became common practice in such developments to include a separate entrance for these tenants, and this has become known as a poor door. Predictably, when he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson ruled out a ban on poor doors, presumably believing wealth should allow you to shield yourself from less well-off neighbours.
