Another nightmare week with the relatives

For those of you not of a scientific bent, all you need to remember is that the theory is to do with gravity and motion and not, as one educationally challenged friend posited to me, some hypothesis for dealing with unwanted family members at a will reading. I won't blind you with science, but basically Einstein believed that all motion in the universe is related; that the speed of gravity and the speed of light are the same. I'm no physicist but the result seems to me that you get to see a heavy object landing on your foot at much the same time that gravity lets you feel it. Now scientists have a chance to prove old Alfred wrong. I haven't quite understood it. It's something to do with Jupiter lining up with some star called a quasar and everyone getting very excited with measuring using what I can only imagine will be quite enormous rulers. Thus it may be that one of the things in life which we take for granted will be blown out from under us.

This, in a sense, is what the government has been trying to do with the other staple theory of relativity – that's the one that says your house price will go up or down relative to your geographical location in the North-South divide. Apparently that is no longer true. As late as April this year Stephen Byers, the man with the mind of a steel trap and an assistant with no steel in her trap at all, was telling the world that this ancient theory was pure poppycock and that once Jupiter aligned with Mars he would prove it. You will be pleased to know that officially there is no North-South divide. So come on you people of West Scotland, Blackpool, Paisley and parts of Wales, pack up all your cares and woes and pick up a housing bargain in Esher or Gerrard's Cross.

This is where the latent scientist in me raises its ugly head. I hate to let a little thing like facts and figures get in the way of government policy but I suspect the policy advisers are speaking out of Uranus. Here's the thing – if you've got, say, £60,000 and you fancy a life in Ardrossan on the west coast of Scotland, then frankly you can have your pick of any property in the place. Indeed I shouldn't be surprised if you could buy the estate agents as well. Or how about Abedare in Wales, where £40,000 will secure the average home of your average dreams? I have a friend who recently bought a very nice cottage in Derbyshire for £50,000. It's very nice. It has a garden and everything. Just as an aside – it's near her Auntie Maureen's who runs a Reiki massage parlour from her garage. I'm not offering her services to straighten out your chakras. I'm just making the point that you couldn't buy a potential massage-parlour-cum-oil-change centre for £50,000 anywhere in the area of the South that I hang my hat.

Stephen Byers was telling the world that the theory of a North-South property divide was pure poppycock and that once Jupiter aligned with Mars he would prove it

The fact is that everyone knows the cost of your home increases or decreases relative to your postcode and the differential can be enormous. Now, you could see this as a marvellous opportunity for those in need of inexpensive housing. About 30,000 affordable new homes are needed in London at the moment of which around 2900 were actually provided last year. Why doesn't everyone from the South just hie North and be done with their bricks-and-mortar troubles? Well, you haven't the time and I lack the energy to discuss the endless woes of social mobility but I do have another suggestion. How about ditching the Thatcherite notion that your home is a kind of investment bank and focusing more on the idea that everybody needs to live somewhere? How about legally limiting the amount of profit an individual is allowed to make from the buying and selling of their primary property? Such a legislative brake would stop insane house price surges. It might even have the added benefit of stopping the nation doing endless DIY in the misguided belief that they are "adding to their investment". Perhaps we could even get rid of makeover programmes on TV and people might actually...