I was very fortunate to have bought a house when I was first at the Covert Oxonian Aerodrome - it cost £34000 plus £1000 for central heating and another £2000 for a garage, so the total was £37000. According to the BoE inflation calculator, today it should be worth £112623...
But the current figure is actually over twice that, thanks to 'buy to let' parasites and other speculators pushing up the prices.
Currently, a 2 bed semi in the charming town of Carterton costs around £825 per month to rent, so £285 for a Grade 2 Type 5 married patch house doesn't sound too bad to me.
Local prices in Oxfordshire are utterly crazy. Quite how a first tourist posted to Brize could ever afford to buy even the smallest house, I cannot imagine.
The 'London effect' has now reached Kidlington, ever since the excellent new train service to Bicester Village, High Wycombe and London Marylebone started up last year. I'm told that prices have already increased by 20%...
But no matter whether anyone considers the rental rate for service accommodation to be reasonable, the squalid state of some of those places in the Sun article is beyond any reason. Bring back Ministry of Works / Ministry of Public Blunders and Wonders / Department of Environment!
I recall a 4* telling us how even he'd been buggered about by the privatised crooks - "If that's how they treat people lucky enough to be at the top, God help those lower down" was his frank admission.