When former chancellor George Osborne launched his help to buy housing scheme in 2013, wise heads warned that, once a government starts subsidising mortgages, it will find it hard to stop.

So it is proving. Another £10bn is to be thrown at help to buy, the government has said in a supposedly crowd-pleasing announcement. This is a 50% increase on the sum already spent. City analysts calculate it will take until 2027 for all the money to be distributed. For as far as the eye can see, help to buy is here to stay.

On the evidence since 2013, the only guaranteed beneficiaries will be housebuilders. With a prop under house prices, their profit margins have returned to the 25% mark. Returns on capital are fatter in many cases. Yet this lovely cash hasn’t fuelled a golden era of housebuilding. Instead, the companies are returning their “surplus capital” to shareholders. Top executives, incentivised to do exactly that, are becoming richer than pre-crash bankers.

It isn’t even obvious that first-time buyers, as a group, have gained much. The ability to buy a new home with a 5% deposit is of questionable benefit if the price of the house has been artificially inflated and the government’s “interest free” portion of the mortgage doesn’t last forever.

Back in 2013, Osborne had excuse of sorts – he could plead that the banks were still in post-crash recovery mode. By contrast, the Bank of England these days frets about too much credit in the system, not too little. The situation cries out for imaginative policies to boost the supply of housing – especially regeneration projects. Another sugary serving of help to buy will do nothing to improve the underlying problem.

“We mustn’t let this scheme turn into a permanent scheme,” warned Lord King, governor of the Bank when help to buy was launched. His argument was that the policy was “a little too close for comfort to a general scheme to guarantee mortgages”. Too late now. Help to buy has acquired a life of its own and no politician dares to stand in its way.

Monarch cash injection should never have taken off

The collapse of an airline is always shocking for customers and staff, but you will struggle to find many industry-watchers who are surprised by the failure of Monarch.

The £165m funding injection a year ago by owner Greybull Capital – “the largest investment in our 48-year history,” crowed Monarch chief executive Andrew Swaffield – always looked to be a case of hope triumphing over experience. Greybull, remember, had already invested £75m in 2014.

Last year’s big plan involved Monarch ordering fuel-efficient aircraft from Boeing but required the business to stay aloft until the new planes arrived, which wasn’t scheduled to start until next year. In perfect flying conditions, it might have worked. In the airline game, however, nothing ever runs perfectly. Currency movements, terrorist incidents, fuel prices, strikes by air-traffic controllers are constant business risks.

All four factors played a role at Monarch but the underlying cause is simply that easyJet and Ryanair are bigger, better-capitalised, more efficient and more able to ride the upsets. Ryanair, by cancelling so many flights, may be guilty of running itself too leanly, but it still a business that is expected to make after-tax profits this year of €1.4bn (£1.2bn).

Air Berlin and Alitalia couldn’t live with the price competition. It’s no surprise that Monarch couldn’t either. The only mystery is why Greybull was so optimistic a year ago.

Tesco’s fake farm wheeze comes home to roost

Tesco’s introduction of fictitious British-style farm names was chief executive Dave Lewis’s finest hour, marketing folk used to agree. The wheeze looks less clever after the investigation by this paper and ITV showed packs of Lidl drumsticks being opened at 2 Sisters’ poultry plant and being repackaged for Tesco under its Willow Farms brand.

The supermarket has since said it made a mistake when it described its Willow Farm chicken as reared exclusively for Tesco. It was the made-up brand that was supposed to be exclusive, not the product. The company apologised to customers for “any confusion”.

But surely the whole fake farms project was designed to confuse? It suggests precise sourcing, or least supreme confidence about provenance. Lewis would be wise to address the question when he presents Tesco’s interim results on Wednesday. The “every Lidl helps” gag is catching on.