Newton Emerson, who clearly has time on his hands, was rummagingthrough the policy programmes of the North's parties and has unearthed aradical approach to the housing crisis.
As property prices across Northern Ireland rise uncontrollably, Conservative Unionist housing spokesman Lord Henry Beigh-Window proposes a somewhat drastic solution.
"Over the past 30 years women have entered the workplace in unprecedented numbers, doubling the income of most families. Also, over the past 30 years, the price of a family home has doubled in real terms. These two alarming facts can not be unconnected. Indeed, it is my contention that female employment is the principal factor driving the unsustainable rise in house prices - and ironically, it is women themselves who suffer most from the consequences of their own selfish actions.
Allow me to explain. In earlier times only men worked and so the market ensured that a single wage was sufficient to purchase a house. This left women free to choose between their traditional role ("marriage") or remaining single and supporting themselves ("teaching"). However, that all changed with the invention of feminism in 1970, when troublemakers urged women of all inclinations to seek work and achieve "financial equality".
At first such women were paid only token wages due to legitimate business concerns about pregnancy and fainting. But the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 permanently altered the balance of power between the sexes by proving that a woman could do a bad job just as well as any man. Soon two-wage households were the norm, greatly increasing the earning power of the average family.
Previously this second wage would have been wisely invested in 3 per cent Empire Bonds with perhaps a little put away at the Post Office, but thanks again to Margaret Thatcher people were encouraged instead to invest their extra income in home ownership. Hence, by the immutable laws of supply and demand, house prices soon began to rise at twice the rate of wages and have continued to do so ever since, creating precisely the sort of monetarist inflationary disaster Margaret Thatcher came to power by promising to prevent. So much for hiring a woman!
The result of this so-called emancipation has been female economic enslavement. It now requires two wages to buy a house and even more to rent one, so women are no longer free to choose between marriage and independence. Indeed women are now more financially dependent on men than ever, for without a secure relationship they have no prospect of secure housing and are condemned to spend the rest of their lives renting small rooms in student neighbourhoods, increasingly bitter and hysterical as one by one their friends pair off and settle down to a lifetime of £800 a month mortgage payments in the suburbs.
As revealed in the recent and if I may say so rather poignant Channel 4 documentary Sex and the City, thousands of such women across Northern Ireland are already growing old - or at least, too old to marry - on a flat-pack shelf of their own self-assembly. So much for feminism!
It is true that a small number of women have found both professional success and personal fulfilment in the workplace, mostly by writing newspaper columns entitled "How to have it all". Yet this only perpetuates the bogus notion of "job satisfaction" - employment for its own sake - an idea roundly condemned as an anti-social corporatist plot by the famous Canadian economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, in his 1957 masterpiece, The Affluent Society. Alas Galbraith's work has had little impact on the real world, as ordinary people have difficulty understanding the concept of a famous Canadian economist.
So what is to be done? Clearly we must lance the boil of this paper property boom with a rigorous deflationary response.
That's why I believe it is the duty of every responsible adult to turn to their partner this morning and say, "Which one of us should go to work today and which one should stay in bed?"
I am not sexist - it matters not to me whether you or your lady wife draws the short straw. The important thing is that we return, immediately, to a single-income household economy.
Having thus restored the natural order of things we can roll over, perhaps snooze a little while, and await the inevitable market correction.
Of course an alternative solution might be to employ women to build more houses. But let's not try anything too radical until we've exhausted the sensible options."
(Lord Henry Beigh-Window employs his wife as his personal secretary. In the earnest hope of cheaper housing for all, he no longer pays her a salary.)
Newton Emerson is editor of the satirical website portadownnews.com.