Market choices

TRUST KEN LOACH to inject a bit of politics into the Cathy Come Home anniversary. Interviewed on the Today Programme this morning, the director took issue with the idea that governments only have limited influence. ‘We’ve chosen to have a market economy that produces homelessness,’ he told John Humphrys.

‘Government can have a housing policy. Government can democratically decided to build homes. We used to do it. It was called council housing.’

Humphrys later pressed housing minister Yvette Cooper to endorse Shelter’s call for an extra 20,000 social rented homes a year. Go here for that (don’t expect much new) and here for an interview with Shelter, which has launched a Wall of Shame for people to sign on the South Bank in London.