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Given successive governments’ failure to tackle the housing crisis, I can imagine twentysomethings being so desperate soon that they’ll convert garages into bunked-up bedrooms on the sly. After all, some are already sleeping in kitchens so the rent can be split one more way, or sharing bedrooms with strangers.

Others have had to endure extended adolescence, stuck at the parental home, listening to their fathers snore as they lie under the Disney duvet of childhood. According to the housing charity Shelter, the average Londoner now faces a 29-year wait to get on the property ladder.

Housing is the biggest problem currently facing the capital. So how have the great political minds of our day decided to conquer it? Oh yes, by giving property developers another opt-out from having to pay for affordable homes. The vacant building credit is the bright idea of Brandon Lewis, the new housing minister. It means developers who turn empty buildings into private homes are let off paying extra cash that would otherwise go towards housing for less rich residents.

This is clearly mad. But you don’t have to believe me on that: a senior official at Westminster council called the change “insane” and claimed the council could lose up to £1 billion a year — money that would otherwise help provide lower-cost accommodation.

Lewis believes the market will solve the crisis (because it’s done so well at that in the past). But what will actually happen now is that deep-pocketed developers, the ones building those luxury apartments/ investments where the lights are always out, will just put more profits into the pockets of shareholders, and contribute even less to local communities. 

Consider one scheme that has already benefited: 20 Grosvenor Square, an apartment block backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council. The new policy allowed the developer to halve  its contribution to affordable housing in the borough.

This policy is so awful, even some of those who’ll benefit oppose it. The Westminster Property Association, which represents some of the capital’s biggest developers, wrote to ministers to condemn it. The chairman, Daniel Van Gelder, said: “Such policies will... lead to a further erosion of the ability of people from a wide range of backgrounds to live in the heart of the capital.”

He’s right. And we don’t want a “doughnut” London where the rich live in the centre and the poor are pushed to the periphery. That’s why instead of removing affordable homes requirements, we should be extending them. Currently, a property is deemed “affordable” if its rent is 80 per cent of the market rate; that should be 60 per cent in parts of London, while planning permission should only be granted for big developments if half the units are affordable.

The housing crisis may take 20 years to fix — but a start would be for Lewis to drop this dire policy. I can think of one way to persuade him: he could spend a week living in a converted garage.

I’ve already paid dearly for using Tinder

I was on Tinder briefly last year, until the umpteenth man asked if I had only joined as an experiment for an Evening Standard article.

The dating app had its less appealing elements: the Ken doll torso shots, the inspirational quotes, the time I accidentally swiped right on the stalkery super-creep from school (we matched). Its great selling point, though, was that it was free.

Next month, Tinder will launch a paid-for service, which has already been tested in the UK. It will give users the all-important undo function, for when your finger moves faster than your pheromones. I don’t understand why the app doesn’t just bring in advertising instead, flashing up a plug every 10 or so swipes.

There may be an even better way it could make cash, though. My Tinder experience showed me that those who enjoyed it most were those who needed it least. Married friends were desperate to “ghost Tinder” on my behalf, swiping right on blokes whose listed interests were “drugs, tattoos and f***ing” for a laugh. They also wanted their own profiles to find out how they’d do.

My mother thought it was hilarious too, at least until a naked guy with a strategically-placed Coke can popped into view (“Well, it can’t be that big...” she declared).

So here’s my suggestion: Tinder should create a sister site that the coupled-up can pay to use. There’d be no hook-ups, no flirting, just mindless matching — like a human Bejeweled. It’d probably make them hug their partner tighter at night too.

The gross fictions of American Sniper

American Sniper has just become the highest-grossing war film in US history. It tells the story of Chris Kyle, the heroic Navy Seal/villainous killing machine (delete according to political leaning) who did four tours of Iraq. This is the war-on-terror served up as pro-US propaganda. Lazy. Shallow. A complex conflict reduced to “Americans good, brown guys bad”.

The action jumps from the Twin Towers collapsing to Kyle out in Iraq fighting al Qaeda — which doesn’t work chronologically, let alone causally. I’m sure many viewers will have spotted that, but the problem is the ones who won’t, who’ll have simply swallowed that false link. All films employ artistic licence, of course, but here it feels like audience manipulation.

The film has its Hollywood ending too — implying that Kyle helped “win” the war by killing an enemy sniper. But there was no real victory. To see that, all we have to do is turn on the TV today.

A play not to see on a works outing

After watching Bull — a new play by Mike Bartlett at the Young Vic — I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. It’s about power and bullying in the workplace, showing how your desk mate would stab you in the back to save their job. I can’t recommend it enough — just don’t go as an office outing.

@RosamundUrwin

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