Closed Circuit: Brexit means breakfast

After all the soul-searching and the various academic studies on the root causes of the housing crisis, could it be that the answer lies in croissants?

Housing associations have urged the UK government to help unblock the funding stream from the European Investment Bank – whose vice-president Alexander Stubb this week told the BBC that a key reason the institution was lending less to UK projects was “insecurities and uncertainties about breakfast”.

He quickly corrected himself, of course, and it’s not for Closed Circuit to mock a former Finnish prime minister for his command of English, especially as even our own politicians seem to get the two mixed up – remember “we will make breakfast… Brexit a success”?

But it did get us thinking. We’ve all been to breakfast meetings where the soggy pastries on offer fail to inspire. Might this be holding back Theresa May and David Davis in their attempts to negotiate a painless exit from the European Union?

Could the solution to getting more cash from Europe into UK affordable housing schemes be as simple as a few trays of bacon butties and some HP sauce? Given the stalled state of the negotiations, it seems that anything’s worth a shot at this point.

Spare a thought for a kind soul who found that one good deed can inadvertently lead to another, and another, and another.

Yorkshire Cat Rescue was alerted to a man living alone in a housing association property in Bradford with a “substantial number of cats”. When the rescue team arrived they discovered there were in fact 33 cats living in the house – all related to a single female the man had rescued from the street two years ago.

Sam Davies, manager of the Yorkshire Cat Rescue centre, said the sight of so many cats in one house was “quite simply phenomenal and a little unnerving too”. Apparently the cats had been looked after and were well fed – an impressive feat with so many hungry mouths to feed.

Now the charity is warning other housing associations not to leave pet-owning tenants without any support – something for all good landlords to meows on, perhaps?