I am intimately familiar with the Liverpool of the 1980s, though to be honest a trip to the Littlewoods basement cafe in Church Street was a major treat compared to our usual forays around Birkenhead Market.
Your argument about tax paid on the things you buy for your house is besides the point. Unfortunately you chose to cut out the part of my post where I pointed out that I stand to have massively increased the value of my home simply by living in it in the long term and doing only what has been absolutely necessary to maintain it. I get that you’ve bought a fixer-upper and feel aggrieved at the idea of inheritance tax eating away at some of the capital you’ve invested in it but I still say you’re making yourself, as an outlier, to be too much of a case study. I don’t believe your experience is typical of the majority. Nor do I think it’s in any way confined to the south east of England. Even in the 1980s there were houses with swimming pools in the leafier Merseyside suburbs, some of them within walking distance of the Grammar school I was lucky enough to attend.
And if you’re going to accuse me of being flippant, maybe don’t do it in the same post as suggesting I’m characterising you as Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Enough, anyway. Bedtime.