Unpleasant

Your host is not, in the great scheme of things, poor.

I can, however, only dream of being able to pay £2,800 a month for a flat.

Alas, it is not only Boris who is pushing 'affordable' housing ("affordable" meaning, in general, 80% of market price - reduced to a still astronomical 60% in the Mount Pleasant case). The term is all over Labour policy documents, in London and nationally. A modest proposal for you to ponder over the weekend: let's stop talking about 'affordable' housing and start talking about social, or even better council housing, which is increasingly the only sort of housing that any normal person can actually afford.