Best Of

.

A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.

Council rejects 100 homes.

Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.

Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.

End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.

https://nitter.poast.org/jakewg_/status/2063551764796752183#m

No sympathy for NIMBYs

What about local democracy?

Sadly I seem to repeat the same issue

we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..

We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.

That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.

No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.

Here’s 170 you can redeploy already.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/170-jobs-lost-historic-gateshead-34087173

Where to start;

No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.

If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.


In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…

So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.

Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!

Peter.

We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.

The truly humble would read up on correlation and causation.

Billions in aid handed to terrorists and criminals
Secret dossier reveals foreign aid and Covid relief loans were appropriated by gangs and hostile states

Terrorists, hostile states and gangsters have been given more than £28bn of taxpayers’ money, including through aid payments, according to a secret government report.
...
More than £28bn ended up in the hands of those wishing to harm Britain between 2015 and 2021, according to the report, which was commissioned and produced by the Cabinet Office but was buried during the previous government.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/bf51632ce387959b

Gift link so no paywall.

Telegraph comments show the intelligence of their readers, blaming the current govt for fraud commited 5-10 years ago under the Tories and covered up in 2023 by the Tories.

Quick skim read of the Telegraph article but what it actually seems to say is that because the Covid funds were badly designed, handled and monitored there was;

Wide scale fraud, much undetected at the time.

Some, perhaps but not definitely most, but certainly a large amount was done by organised criminal gangs.

Many of those criminal gangs were Eastern European.

Some of those gangs had links to terrorists and people smugglers and others in the Middle East.

Therefore some of the money may well have reached these groups.

So in conclusion: up to £28 Bn
misappropriated but no way to know how much of that actual ended up with “The Baddies!”

Peter.

On topic, @TheScreamingEagles is correct.

However, I think the *really* smart bet is on:

(a) Labour to win more than 50% of the vote.
and
(b) Reform to win.

My rationale is that there's a hell of a lot of tactical squeezing to come, and there's only a very small window where Labour wins on 45-50% of the vote.

Will any bookies allow this bet as a doubke, or does one have to do two separate bets?

It's two separate bets. Basically, one is buying Labour 50-55% (7/2), 55-60 (12/1), and Reform to win (6/1).

If we convert them into probabilities, we're talking about almost exactly a 50% chance to come in, for something I think is probably more like a 70-80% chance. Which is a pretty big margin.

Afternoon all.

The Germans are a miserable lot.

That's PR for you. No one is getting what they want. At least here, around a third of the voters are getting what they wanted.

Not evidenced in the header.
They're are about to kick out the guy who delivered it.

Afternoon all.

The Germans are a miserable lot.

That's PR for you. No one is getting what they want. At least here, around a third of the voters are getting what they wanted.

Not evidenced in the header.
They're are about to kick out the guy who delivered it.

Germany is having a nasty crisis - from the export superpower of Europe to years of economic crisis.

The industrial national champions have been especially hard hit.

If only Germany hadn't Brexited....

Oh.

Brexit damages the EU too. Thats what trade barriers do.

But mainly it is the technological lead over China that is lost. China is dominating the new industries of EV's etc.