Pulling Teeth

The solution to the housing crisis sits right on the end of one's nose.

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian by Édouard Manet (1868)

George Orwell wrote that England is a family with the wrong members in charge. As I work through the Everyman essay collection—an elephantine tome of 1,500 buttery pages—it appears Orwell was right then, and he’s right now.

Here in Great Britain, in this boiler room pretending to be a country, we Brits indulge in our latest crisis. American readers, here I present a stereotypical treat into which you can sink your perfect teeth. The bear-trap-mouthed Brits are suffering a crisis in dentistry. How apt a metaphor. To spend one moment here is akin to pulling teeth sans Benzocaine.

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Our luckless prime minister, elected on the votes of nobody, could bet £10,000 on Jason Statham having a bald head only for Statham to smash down the front door of number ten Downing Street sporting shoulder-length dreadlocks.

Not to worry. Our unelected errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill, promised to end the horror. The horror, naturally, descended into farce no sooner than Rishi Sunak had opened his chops.

Self-help Sunak embodies the can-do conservatism of the yuppie 1980s. It’s not the 1980s. But here we are. Anyway, after promising ‘significant action’ to arrest the dentistry crisis, Sunak visited a Cornish dental practice.

This sugary set-piece snap fest was intended to showcase Sunak at his sleeves-rolling best. If God exists, then he or she is a militant ironist.

After chatting to staff and patients at Gentle Dental, Cornwall, Sunak boasted he would end the crisis in which last year twelve million Brits were unable to get a seat in a dentist’s chair. The problem? Later, it transpired that the same dentist was, as 90 percent of dentists, no longer accepting NHS patients. Reader, imagine President Biden promising to end childhood obesity with the expert help of the local McDonald’s manager.

It's not all bad news. Sunak will be gladdened to see the green shoots of his self-help, do-it-yourself philosophy sprouting amongst the lower orders. Caroline Pursey was on the news this week. Tortured by a mouth full of troublesome teeth, Caroline couldn’t catch a dental appointment for love or money. So, she took the problem literally into her own hands. Caroline grabbed a pair of pliers and yanked out twelve teeth.

Doubtless, some spod at Conservative Party headquarters failed to see Caroline’s desperation. I can hear them now: “Such do-it-yourself dentistry embodies the can-do conservatism of a new Britain! With just a pair of pliers and a stiff upper lip, Caroline turned adversity into triumph.”

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Once they’ve finished rubbing their groins, Conservative Party researchers should read the Financial Times. Apparently, and to the chagrin of absolutely nobody, young Britons would sooner vote for a one-armed blind man juggling a fizzing vial of smallpox than vote for the Conservative Party.

The myth of idealistic, leftie youths is vastly overcooked. Forty percent of American twenty-somethings voted for Trump in 2020 and will do so in November. One-third of young adults in Spain, Germany, and France routinely vote for the right. And yet, just one in ten Brits under 45 plan to vote for the Conservatives.

Why? Perhaps they’ve noticed their wages haven’t budged since the bankers melted down their futures for scrap metal in 2008. Perhaps they’ve noticed a shoe-box room in a crime-ridden London slum dissolves half of their paltry salaries.

Just 39 percent of Brits under 30 agree that hard work usually pays off. Sixty percent of young Americans agree. Tellingly, two-thirds of Brits over 70 agree.

The problem is housing. In Great Britain, we are different. We are forward-thinking. In Great Britain, we believe that housing is a right—a right to squeeze obscene rents out of feckless good-for-nothings who think they’re entitled to live under a roof. If they don’t like it, they can snap up a slew of slum dwellings and stuff through the door as many stinking tenants as common sense may suggest.

And remember, anyone who whines about this legalised servitude is just a jealous socialist without the nous to buy dirt-cheap houses decades before they were born. They’re just jealous of the landlord’s considerable business brain. All thanks to forces utterly beyond the landlord’s control, that £20,000 house he snapped up in 1988 is now worth ten times as much. The man’s a fucking genius. Hard cheese, old chap.

The youth have noticed our meritocracy is light on merit. Since 1990, the percentage of American homeowners aged between 25 to 34 has dropped six points. In Germany, that’s down eight points. In France, just three points. Here in Great Britain, that figure is down twenty-two—twenty-fucking-two—points.

At this rate, Millennials and Zoomers are mere breathing machines for Boomer pensions and slumlord rents. As Orwell said, England is a family with the wrong members in charge.

But there is a solution sitting on the end of our noses. First, we must accept that building houses is unfair to those go-getters and their right to fleece everyone else. If freedom means anything, it is the freedom for the pike to devour the minnow.

This week, I’ve witnessed several people milling around with futuristic goggles attached to their heads. Apparently, Apple’s new Vision Pro goggles are a revolution in ‘mixed reality.’ Soon, we plebs will live in the reality of our choosing, limited only by the fires of our imagination.

The solution to the housing crisis is here! Purchase a pair of these goggles and a sturdy tent. Yes, the British climate is intemperate. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Ask yourself, what would Caroline Pursey do? Would she whine and complain about the cold? Or would she slather her entire body in Deep Heat? My friends, the housing crisis is a social construct.

And remember, Great Britain is the greatest country on Earth—unless you have teeth or prefer to live indoors.

Now, go out there and be somebody.

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Last time at Oxford Sour