The Nanny Returns

I have just now learned that the Scottish Government is considering quotas for HMO properties. In other words, the Government thinks they have a right to decide how many people may live in a particular private home. A protest website has been set up here.

The most maddening aspect of this is, it is the SNP who are trying to bring it forward and I thought they would have learned from New Labour's fiasco that was the 'nanny state years'. Further to this, Swinney is trying to make £600m of efficiency savings yet the SNP think this is a venture worth pursuing?

It is entirely possible that if these rules had been in place in 2001 then I wouldn't have been able to share in the most fun flat that I've experienced. Six of us shared a place in Buntsfield, that soon increased to 7 as the box room was emptied for a friend's use and we regularly had one or two people crashing in the living room. Good times indeed at the height of our student days. The kind of flat where you worked hard and played hard.

Actually, that's not true, we didn't do nearly enough studying, we were as quiet as fieldmice (regularly found in the kitchen) and we played Risk most nights which is actually a good example of why university education shouldn't really be free but that's beside the point.

This needless meddling surely cannot be allowed to get off the ground. The reasons put forward by those in favour are that too many people living in the one area can harm local services and harm diversity.

This simply makes no sense. I currently live in Marchmont, the hub of student activity and I have seen many, many flats that break the HMO rules. But the area is teeming with people from different backgrounds, local shops are always full of shoppers and the Meadows is as busy a place as one could hope for given our cold Spring.

Of course these new rules would not impact this too adversely but my point is there is no problem with the current set up, the main thing these new rules would do is break up homes and stop big groups of students from having a fun year or two living together.

So hopefully this option is being considered and will quickly be dropped. But for now, disapproval can be registered through the link above.

It's worth noting that it won't be voted for in the Chamber. Ministers will simply adopt the rules when they believe the time is right.