Yesterday's appearance by local Councillor and Parliamentary Candidate for Chatham & Aylesford Tristan Osborne on a local BBC politics programme caused a stir on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
Although I agree with the sentiment that the housing ladder is impossible to get onto for the majority of people of mine and Tristan's generation ( I think I'm 3 years older) and many of my friends who I went to Uni with have struggled and even had to get 90% mortgages with their parents acting as guarantors.
I was lucky - I guess - we are a small family and my granddad had divided his estate between my sister and I. I was able to get a 50% mortgage and it has kept our payments down so I've been able to support my small (and growing) family.
For others, it is a lot harder.
So what went wrong?
Well... Tristan made a bit of a sweeping generalisation and said... well here's what he said.
So why is that a problem.... Well there is an implication that he has struggled to get on the housing ladder with the rest of Generation Rent and is one of those that suffered as well.
Local Citizen Journalist Ed Jennings quickly dug out his home address from the Medway Councillor's register of interests (available on the Medway Council webpage) and then hopped on Zoopla to get an estimate value of the house.
It isn't up to me to reproduce Tristan's home address, the information is out there but I know how I'd feel if someone blogged my home address.
Ultimately the value of the terraced house came to approximately £306,942
As I understand it this property is owned not rented (I'm open to correction!!!) and the accusation from local Conservative Councillor Chris Irvine is that he has misrepresented himself to the viewers and voters.
I personally believe that it was a sweeping generalisation that people of our age are having trouble and was not meant to be a deliberate misrepresentation.
However I think that Tristan should clarify this.
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