Best Of

Interesting article on the Labour new housing policy.
My guess is that it gets well and truly crippled, but if it were actually delivered to its potential, it could be transformative.
The excerpt points out the necessity for accompanying transport investment.

https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/labour-are-finally-taking-the-housing
..To be clear, this isn’t a policy for sprawl. New developments must exceed minimum density standards of 40dph (dwelling per hectare) for all stations and 50dph for the best connected stations. There is an expectation that in urban areas even higher densities will be reached.

It is hard to overstate how big this is. The Government could easily exceed its 1.5 million home target for the Parliament just by building near stations in London and the South East. And that doesn’t even adjust for the higher densities sought in urban areas. If it survives consultation, and you best believe there will be an almighty fight, it will be the single most powerful pro-supply move in post-war Britain.

This is radical by British standards, but there is precedent. New Zealand’s most expensive cities have built at a clip since successive governments brought in measures to create a similar ‘default yes’ to densification near city centres and busy transport corridors. One study suggested that over six years the policy cut Auckland’s rents by nearly a third. If the same happened in the capital, the average Londoner would save £9,000 each year.

California, one of the few places with a housing crisis as bad as our own, is trying something similar. They have just passed SB79, a major reform that will permit up to nine-storey development near bus, tube, and train stations.

There will be challenges. Building near train stations will mean busier trains. ..

It can be done:

Canada's population dropped by 76,068 between July and October - a contraction driven mainly by limits on immigration, the federal statistics agency has said.

The decrease was due mainly to a drop in non-permanent residents, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday, and comes after Ottawa set a goal to restrict temporary residents to 5% of the 41.6 million population by 2027.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g6595619yo

I can understand the rate of increase going down, but I'm surprised the population as a whole has dropped.

Not at all surprising. There are large flows in both directions, so if inflow is severely restricted then the total population drops. The drop in Canada is due to a large increase in non-permenant resident outflows.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710004001

In the longer term having a TFR below 2.1 ensures a falling population in the absence of immigration. Canadas TFR this year is 1.48. There is a lag on this as number of births is determined by the number of women aged between 15-40 as well as TFR.

In the absence of net immigration the tendency is for population ageing and decline. No country in history where the TFR falls below 2.1 has ever increased it back over that figure.

Ithink that within a generation or so western countries will have to choose between population decline and all its associated socio-economic stresses and competing for immigrants. East Asia already is in that situation.

When we look at British figures we see a latest figure of net immigration of 204 000, on a steep downward trend. This is still net immigration because of non-EU migrants, mostly for work and study. There is net emmigration of both UK nationals and of EU nationals. Notably the emmigrants are 99% of working age.

Without net immigration of 100 000 or so per year our population would also decline. I think that with the increasing restrictions on non-EU immigration that it is quite likely that we will flip to net emmigration before the next election. This hasn't happend since the 1980's. The effect would be to increase the dependency ratio.

I would rather solve our housing shortage via construction than population decline, but if our population were to fall by about ten million that would help solve our housing shortage.

That would be a silver lining to a very dark cloud though.

I dont think that the population will fall quite that far. With no net immigration the population of England would drop by 3 million or so in the next 25 years. Of course it is possible that net emmigration it could drop faster.

The problem would be socio-demographic. An increasing tax burden on workers to pay the pensions and welfare of retirees, schools closing due to low enrollments, skill shortages in areas including health care and construction etc.

In the short term there would be a reallocation of workers domestically, with sectors like hospitality and social care becoming more expensive as they pay staff more. Good for the workers in those sectors, bad for consumers in thosr sectors. In the longer run we would just become an older greyer less dynamic society.

I'm not sure increasing pay for social care is nailed on. Declining standards seems also plausible. Less staff per care home, lower service provision in practice etc.

Interesting article on the Labour new housing policy.
My guess is that it gets well and truly crippled, but if it were actually delivered to its potential, it could be transformative.
The excerpt points out the necessity for accompanying transport investment.

https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/labour-are-finally-taking-the-housing
..To be clear, this isn’t a policy for sprawl. New developments must exceed minimum density standards of 40dph (dwelling per hectare) for all stations and 50dph for the best connected stations. There is an expectation that in urban areas even higher densities will be reached.

It is hard to overstate how big this is. The Government could easily exceed its 1.5 million home target for the Parliament just by building near stations in London and the South East. And that doesn’t even adjust for the higher densities sought in urban areas. If it survives consultation, and you best believe there will be an almighty fight, it will be the single most powerful pro-supply move in post-war Britain.

This is radical by British standards, but there is precedent. New Zealand’s most expensive cities have built at a clip since successive governments brought in measures to create a similar ‘default yes’ to densification near city centres and busy transport corridors. One study suggested that over six years the policy cut Auckland’s rents by nearly a third. If the same happened in the capital, the average Londoner would save £9,000 each year.

California, one of the few places with a housing crisis as bad as our own, is trying something similar. They have just passed SB79, a major reform that will permit up to nine-storey development near bus, tube, and train stations.

There will be challenges. Building near train stations will mean busier trains. ..

Beachy Head Woman may be ‘local girl from Eastbourne’, say scientists
DNA advances show Roman-era skeleton, once hailed as first black Briton, came from southern England
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/dec/17/beachy-head-woman-may-be-local-girl-from-eastbourne-say-scientists

Oops !!

The way her origin changed depending on the science of the day is fascinating. Skull morphology suggested African, then DNA said Cypriot (and DNA is the gold standard, right?) but now newer DNA techniques suggest she is English.

If she's Roman-era she can't be 'English' surely?

British/Britannian resident, anyway.

Romano-British, no?

Beachy Head Woman may be ‘local girl from Eastbourne’, say scientists
DNA advances show Roman-era skeleton, once hailed as first black Briton, came from southern England
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/dec/17/beachy-head-woman-may-be-local-girl-from-eastbourne-say-scientists

Oops !!

The way her origin changed depending on the science of the day is fascinating. Skull morphology suggested African, then DNA said Cypriot (and DNA is the gold standard, right?) but now newer DNA techniques suggest she is English.

If she's Roman-era she can't be 'English' surely?

British/Britannian resident, anyway.

https://x.com/atrupar/status/2001397828141175194

Trump on Venezuela: "Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had -- they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn't watching. But they're not gonna do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. They threw our companies out. And we want it back."

Wasn't Trump president for much of this time he's wittering on about?

The original nationalisation of the oil was in the 70s.
More recently, 2007:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/may/02/oilandpetrol.venezuela

Incidentally, it would be incredibly stupid to try and steal Venezuelan oil. So par for Trump.

Pre Chavez the domestic oil industry was (perhaps surprisingly) moderately well run. Sure, various elites stole money, but the actual operations were conducted on a fairly sensible basis.

Chevez changed that. He made a speech which puzzled the Economist, in which he condemned the managers of the industry for "reinvesting too much money". Then he fired them and put in his own guys.

Much of Venezuelan oil is thick, tar like stuff. Very hard to extract and refine. Some was of a much higher grade. The oil from these easy-exploit-wells was sold to pay for the very expensive extraction equipment for the harder to extract stuff.

Chavez demanded (and got) maximum production and maximum money out of the oil industry to buy votes and line the pockets of him and his supporters. This meant ending investment in extraction, largely. And using methods to "push" more oil, faster out of well damaged them. Combined with expropriations of foreign companies, this resulted in a collapse in the oil industry. Which staggers along at a tiny fraction of what it used to do.

To restart things would take many billions of investment. Which Venezuela can't get - no one will put money onshore there after multiple rounds of expropriation of foreign companies.

Even if you invest the money, you then have large amounts of expensive, heavy crude. True, some American refineries *used* to be setup for that stuff. But they've been converted to other work, long since. And few other refineries around the world take heavy stuff.

So going after Venezuelan oil would end up costing billions for a product that few want.

The Trump model, surely, would be from the 1930s, the 1950s or the 1960s, from the eras where his head exists. So think a partial or complete puppet state as in Batista's Cuba or or one of the South American countries dominated by US business interests.

Obviously with crime family Trump and his cronies creaming off their benefits.

On the refineries, I thought there were a series of heavy oil refineries in eg Montana set up to process Canadian crude, for which the supplies are under threat because of Trump's trade war, and for which the alternatives are mainly Venezuelan or Mexican but Mexico is aiming to refine domestically.

So his adventures in Venezuela are a potential new Empire, and also leverage against Canada.

Not quite my beat, but this is an analysis I have seen.