Yes, we know, there's somewhat a shortage of housing in the UK, that's what makes it so darn expensive. But it could be that we still really don't want to have that government led emergency social housing building program that so many are calling for. Over and above the fact that simply issuing more planning chitties is the answer, there's also the point that perhaps we just don't actually have the material to build houses with:

Brick stocks in the UK have reached the lowest level on record as merger mania grips the sector.

Stockpiles of the vital building blocks dipped to 323m at the end of October, down almost a third from 500m in 2012, after stocks of more than 1bn were recorded in 2009, according to monthly reports from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, and the Office for National Statistics.

Apparently every brick that will be made in the next three months has already been sold.

Of course, there's also another way of looking at these numbers. If the building supply industry is operating at full capacity then that must mean that there's rather a lot of building going on. If that's true then whatever it was that we needed to do in order to solve the housing problem has already been done.

Might even be the effects of the government insisting on issuing lots more planning chitties over the past couple of years, eh?