While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
On topic, yes T&H has a touch of Batley & Spen about it. That was crucial for Starmer's position as Lab leader. It took the heat off him when Lab held it. Same here for Johnson if the Cons hold T&H. So let's hope they don't (although confession, I'm long of it at 5).
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
If I worked at my local grocers and did this I’d expect to be fired for it. No idea why JJ thinks it should work differently at a rocket company
Summarily sacking is the problem. And would you really get fired for it at the local grocers?
Part of the point is that Musk goes on about free speech - especially in his takeover of Twitter. But employees expressing concern internally within his company? Sack 'em.
It's yet another example where Musk's image is in stark contrast to his reality.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
If I worked at my local grocers and did this I’d expect to be fired for it. No idea why JJ thinks it should work differently at a rocket company
Summarily sacking is the problem. And would you really get fired for it at the local grocers?
Part of the point is that Musk goes on about free speech - especially in his takeover of Twitter. But employees expressing concern internally within his company? Sack 'em.
It's yet another example where Musk's image is in stark contrast to his reality.
But their ‘concern’ has nothing at all to do with the work, it’s simply a personal attack on the CEO for saying he was going to vote Republican.
If they were trying to get a group together to talk about quality control or safety issues at work, or an accident waiting to happen, that would of course be completely different.
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
Not sure what a Clause 4 moment for Keir would be tbh
It needs to be a headline grabber and it needs to say "you can trust us not to squeeze you until the pips squeak".
Reduction in VAT to 15% would be an interesting one, it says we're a tax cutting party, but the tax we're cutting is the regressive one that hurts the poor the most. It would also help bring the cost of living down.
FUEL DUTY. 52p a litre, plus VAT.
It’s the most regressive tax in the country right now (apart from the TV Tax), and it’s feeding into inflation on everything that needs transport.
Not that regressive. The very poorest don't have cars.
And neither do they need to get to work.
Lazy stereotype which just show how little you know about the lives of the poorest.
A lot of low income people are working in shitty low-paid jobs, to which they need to travel. Many of those not working have to travel regularly to attend job centre interviews, job interviews etc, or if they are ill, work capability assessments and/or medical appointments.
That was an over-generalisation to which I added an edit.
Yes, the real problem is the low-income people who have no public transport options. They are being seriously affected by the price of petrol.
Agree with that strongly. However. Those that drive the most, particularly for pleasure, tend to have the highest incomes. Many of the lowest paid go to work and back and not a great deal more.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
Wasn't the Washington Post one a case of:
*) A journalist retweets a bad joke; *) He gets suspended for a month without pay *) Another journalist (who herself sued - and lost - in a court case against the paper she works for last year) makes a big deal of it. *) She gets dismissed.
I cannot see what she expected the Post to do against the original retweeting journalist. The situations are very different.
As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
Sadly this government have mastered the ability to not try and fix things, whilst convincing their supporters that they really want to and are being held back by their enemies (EU, France, liberals, lefties, BBC, judges etc). Not just on housing (where we have had 11 ministers of state over the last 12 years), but on virtually everything they deal with.
Not sure what a Clause 4 moment for Keir would be tbh
It needs to be a headline grabber and it needs to say "you can trust us not to squeeze you until the pips squeak".
Reduction in VAT to 15% would be an interesting one, it says we're a tax cutting party, but the tax we're cutting is the regressive one that hurts the poor the most. It would also help bring the cost of living down.
FUEL DUTY. 52p a litre, plus VAT.
It’s the most regressive tax in the country right now (apart from the TV Tax), and it’s feeding into inflation on everything that needs transport.
Not that regressive. The very poorest don't have cars.
And neither do they need to get to work.
Lazy stereotype which just show how little you know about the lives of the poorest.
A lot of low income people are working in shitty low-paid jobs, to which they need to travel. Many of those not working have to travel regularly to attend job centre interviews, job interviews etc, or if they are ill, work capability assessments and/or medical appointments.
That was an over-generalisation to which I added an edit.
Yes, the real problem is the low-income people who have no public transport options. They are being seriously affected by the price of petrol.
Agree with that strongly. However. Those that drive the most, particularly for pleasure, tend to have the highest incomes. Many of the lowest paid go to work and back and not a great deal more.
Fuel taxes should be highest for expensive cars. The more you pay for a car at the showroom, the higher the petrol price should be. Even for second-hand models, as they are less efficient.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
Wasn't the Washington Post one a case of:
*) A journalist retweets a bad joke; *) He gets suspended for a month without pay *) Another journalist (who herself sued - and lost - in a court case against the paper she works for last year) makes a big deal of it. *) She gets dismissed.
I cannot see what she expected the Post to do against the original retweeting journalist. The situations are very different.
As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
I think step 2 and 3 are the other way around (which is quite important). Wacko journo didn't shut up about even after she caused the guy to be suspended for basically nothing, the suspension wasn't enough.
We also have the crazy case at the Athletic where it was revealed "protected" groups were given special meeting with the boss under previous leadership, which the NYT have now said no, no more mental health suffers weekly meeting etc....and you can't tweet anything that could be perceived as political ever (and nobody is sure does that mean you can't mention trans athletic issues or gun sports?)
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
If I worked at my local grocers and did this I’d expect to be fired for it. No idea why JJ thinks it should work differently at a rocket company
Summarily sacking is the problem. And would you really get fired for it at the local grocers?
Part of the point is that Musk goes on about free speech - especially in his takeover of Twitter. But employees expressing concern internally within his company? Sack 'em.
It's yet another example where Musk's image is in stark contrast to his reality.
But their ‘concern’ has nothing at all to do with the work, it’s simply a personal attack on the CEO for saying he was going to vote Republican.
If they were trying to get a group together to talk about quality control or safety issues at work, or an accident waiting to happen, that would of course be completely different.
And if the accusations are true, the 'ordinary' channels for complaint failed.
My understanding is that it was about much more than whether the was going to vote Republican or not.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
Wasn't the Washington Post one a case of:
*) A journalist retweets a bad joke; *) He gets suspended for a month without pay *) Another journalist (who herself sued - and lost - in a court case against the paper she works for last year) makes a big deal of it. *) She gets dismissed.
I cannot see what she expected the Post to do against the original retweeting journalist. The situations are very different.
As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
I think step 2 and 3 are the other way around (which is quite important). Wacko journo didn't shut up about even after she caused the guy to be suspended for basically nothing, the suspension wasn't enough.
All founder-led businesses that become major corporates have an element of personality cult about them, but I don't think you can say that makes them bad companies.
All founder-led businesses that become major corporates have an element of personality cult about them, but I don't think you can say that makes them bad companies.
My organizational behaviour prof at business school wrote a book about this. Well worth the read even if it was written several decades ago now.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
To take that a bit further quite a few people have more than one lifeboat.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
Wasn't the Washington Post one a case of:
*) A journalist retweets a bad joke; *) He gets suspended for a month without pay *) Another journalist (who herself sued - and lost - in a court case against the paper she works for last year) makes a big deal of it. *) She gets dismissed.
I cannot see what she expected the Post to do against the original retweeting journalist. The situations are very different.
As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
I think step 2 and 3 are the other way around (which is quite important). Wacko journo didn't shut up about even after she caused the guy to be suspended for basically nothing, the suspension wasn't enough.
Not sure what a Clause 4 moment for Keir would be tbh
It needs to be a headline grabber and it needs to say "you can trust us not to squeeze you until the pips squeak".
Reduction in VAT to 15% would be an interesting one, it says we're a tax cutting party, but the tax we're cutting is the regressive one that hurts the poor the most. It would also help bring the cost of living down.
FUEL DUTY. 52p a litre, plus VAT.
It’s the most regressive tax in the country right now (apart from the TV Tax), and it’s feeding into inflation on everything that needs transport.
Not that regressive. The very poorest don't have cars.
And neither do they need to get to work.
Lazy stereotype which just show how little you know about the lives of the poorest.
A lot of low income people are working in shitty low-paid jobs, to which they need to travel. Many of those not working have to travel regularly to attend job centre interviews, job interviews etc, or if they are ill, work capability assessments and/or medical appointments.
That was an over-generalisation to which I added an edit.
Yes, the real problem is the low-income people who have no public transport options. They are being seriously affected by the price of petrol.
Agree with that strongly. However. Those that drive the most, particularly for pleasure, tend to have the highest incomes. Many of the lowest paid go to work and back and not a great deal more.
Fuel taxes should be highest for expensive cars. The more you pay for a car at the showroom, the higher the petrol price should be. Even for second-hand models, as they are less efficient.
(Runs for cover)
This sounds similar to the idea of charging more for the 1000th unit of electricity than for the 100th, as an alternative to the current standing charge model, that charges efficient users of energy more per unit than wasteful users. Harder to implement with cars though.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
On SNL, he admitted to being on the spectrum. A feature of that is a lack of innate empathy, which no doubt compounds issues of people management.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
Demography and housing choices: Since some of you are still discussing housing questions, I'll ask for some related information. It looks to me as if people are more willing to form "pair bonds" (as a biologist might say) and have chilren in rural areas, than urban areas, pretty universally. That appears to be true, for example, in both the US and Japan, two very different nations.
Is that true in Britain? (And, other nations, if you happen to know?)
(This is important, whether you think declining fertility rates in industrial nations is mostly a problem, or mostly a solution.)
The widespread phenomenon is certainly that straight couples in cities _move_ to suburban and exurban areas, but ones that are commutable. The other widespread phenomenon is that truly "rural areas" experience large out-migration of low-income and less marriageable folks toward cities. So there's a lot going on prior to the question at hand.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
Yes, we've discussed this before. The number of bedrooms per capita has actually increased over the last 40 years.
Doesn't really help the couple in their 20s who'd like to start a family though.
All founder-led businesses that become major corporates have an element of personality cult about them, but I don't think you can say that makes them bad companies.
I'm not saying that.
But I would say that all corporations - especially large ones - have a corporate culture. Those cultures are very hard to change, and are often inspired by their founders - especially when their founders became influential. If that initial culture is bad, then it can remain so for decades.
Corporate cultures are like supertankers: they take massive effort to change. And the captains who might change course were ingrained in the 'old' culture if they are promoted from within.
In the case of Tesla, Musk is a sh*t. And so Tesla's culture is sh*t. The same with Jobs and Apple (he was not a nice man.)
Some companies escape this to a certain extent: IBM has escaped Watson's (*) influence over the last three decades, and I think Ford has escaped Henry Ford's. The latter is interesting, as Ford family members are still very influential. Disney is another example where the founder's influence looms too large.
(*) Not founder, but massive figure in the company's history
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed appartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
It is a bit of a mix, and elderly widows etc. Demographic changes are likely to mean that an ever greater share of housing stock. It must be 7-8 million households.
We are a long way from Granny moving in with Janet and John and their 2.4 kids.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Eh?
I don't remember forecasting an "imminent house price fall".
But, I do think that raising interest rates to try and get on top of inflation would have pretty negative effects on the housing market. I don't think that's a particularly controversial view.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
I’m not making excuses for him, just saying that the current issue was with a bunch of employees bringing politics into work.
Here’s the letter: https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-employees-denounce-ceo-musk-distraction-letter-2022-06-16/ "Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks," "As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX - every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company," "SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon's personal brand." It added: "Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone" and "define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior."
So they’re saying they don’t like what Musk is doing on Twitter, and asking the company what they’re going to do about it.
Any company would fire a bunch of employees for such behaviour.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
Wasn't the Washington Post one a case of:
*) A journalist retweets a bad joke; *) He gets suspended for a month without pay *) Another journalist (who herself sued - and lost - in a court case against the paper she works for last year) makes a big deal of it. *) She gets dismissed.
I cannot see what she expected the Post to do against the original retweeting journalist. The situations are very different.
As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
I think step 2 and 3 are the other way around (which is quite important). Wacko journo didn't shut up about even after she caused the guy to be suspended for basically nothing, the suspension wasn't enough.
Mélenchon update: Yesterday night's judgement of "success" has been revised by Mr Mélenchon to "disappointment". Took a while to read the room after the election of almost 100 extreme-right deputies. All the other parties have abandoned his Nupes alliance now that they've been elected, which means they can rat on their promises to cause conflict with the EU, defund the police, etc. As for Macron, right now no other party wants to join the government, but he can probably cobble together majorities on a vote-by-vote basis; when that fails, he can POSSIBLY dissolve the National Assembly.
The LibDems always release an internal poll on the eve of byelections that show that - shock - it's incredibly tight and only they can beat the Conservatives.
It's amazing how their polling always picks up these incredibly tight contests.
I expect it also picks up the other contests, where the Lib Dems are not in contention. But there is no point in the Lib Dems' publicising those. So you never hear about them, young Smithson. And then you make sweeping generalisations based on very incomplete evidence.
For what it is worth, I think the result in Tiv & Hon will be very close. The Lib Dems have pulled out all the stops on this one. So it just depends on how many electors fall for the Tory dirty tricks and downright lies.
Further proof this government prefers dogs over darkies.
Only two of more than 3,000 applications for sanctuary submitted by Afghans who worked with British forces or the government during the war have been processed by the Ministry of Defence since April.
There has been a “ballooning” backlog of 23,000 applications to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (ARAP) since October last year, with only one in four, or 23 per cent, having been processed.
The number of staff working on the scheme has been cut by a quarter since December, figures uncovered by the Labour Party reveal.
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
She was taken away, and subsequently raped, by a man she met at the police station, who was a visitor unrelated to her case?
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
I’m not making excuses for him, just saying that the current issue was with a bunch of employees bringing politics into work.
Here’s the letter: https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-employees-denounce-ceo-musk-distraction-letter-2022-06-16/ "Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks," "As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX - every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company," "SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon's personal brand." It added: "Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone" and "define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior."
So they’re saying they don’t like what Musk is doing on Twitter, and asking the company what they’re going to do about it.
Any company would fire a bunch of employees for such behaviour.
Sorry, but you're wrong. I doubt any company I worked for would have behaved in the same manner. And a large one Mrs J has worked for had a similar issue and it was worked out internally. The behaviour of a CEO - especially one as famous as Musk - affects employees. I don't have a problem with that - especially as Musk does not allow unionisation.
And allegedly they did try alternate methods through internal systems, and got ignored.
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
Mélenchon update: Yesterday night's judgement of "success" has been revised by Mr Mélenchon to "disappointment". Took a while to read the room after the election of almost 100 extreme-right deputies. All the other parties have abandoned his Nupes alliance now that they've been elected, which means they can rat on their promises to cause conflict with the EU, defund the police, etc. As for Macron, right now no other party wants to join the government, but he can probably cobble together majorities on a vote-by-vote basis; when that fails, he can POSSIBLY dissolve the National Assembly.
Problem is, Macron hasn't got a positive vision of what he wants to do with France. His entire public message has been "You need me to fix France even though you won't like it, and I'm the only sensible option so it's not like you'll vote for anyone else." If he wants to dissolve the National Assembly to try again in a year or so, then he'll need to be more appealing, but I think he's too stubborn to move.
Mélenchon update: Yesterday night's judgement of "success" has been revised by Mr Mélenchon to "disappointment". Took a while to read the room after the election of almost 100 extreme-right deputies. All the other parties have abandoned his Nupes alliance now that they've been elected, which means they can rat on their promises to cause conflict with the EU, defund the police, etc. As for Macron, right now no other party wants to join the government, but he can probably cobble together majorities on a vote-by-vote basis; when that fails, he can POSSIBLY dissolve the National Assembly.
Problem is, Macron hasn't got a positive vision of what he wants to do with France. His entire public message has been "You need me to fix France even though you won't like it, and I'm the only sensible option so it's not like you'll vote for anyone else." If he wants to dissolve the National Assembly to try again in a year or so, then he'll need to be more appealing, but I think he's too stubborn to move.
This isn't as much a problem as you imagine, because nobody at all in France has a positive vision for France. It is a country of depressives and millenarians. It's unfair to reduce the most popular choices at the elections to austerity, anarchy or fascism, but that the caricature isn't THAT unfair is telling.
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
The energy provider market reminds me of sub-prime mortgage crisis. All these companies who have f##k all resources or experience, just a call centre and a flash harry who thinks they can trade energy markets better than the institutions, and then trying to undercut the established players by not having any reserves if there is a big swing.
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
It's also easy to forget to factor in the social cost of uprooting older people from the houses and communities where they have built up support networks. Kicking granny out of her house (persuading them to downsize) is not just an economic transaction, it is a social one with potentially bigger costs than the economic one.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
On SNL, he admitted to being on the spectrum. A feature of that is a lack of innate empathy, which no doubt compounds issues of people management.
IMV that's a terrible excuse. 'being on the spectrum' (self-diagnosed) is not an excuse for treating other poorly.
Mrs J is almost certainly on the spectrum, and our son might be (he is being tested atm). I don't know about me, but I have certain traits that may be (hence the walking and running). I don't want 'being on the spectrum' as being associated with such mistreatment of others.
Put simply: a CEO being 'on the spectrum' and a really poor person-manager may be good for a small start-up with a few dozen employees, where they know and deal with the CEO personally. If it means you mistreat people, it's sh*t if the company has thousands of employees.
I'd strongly argue that 'being on the spectrum' does not give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse others.
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Very worried about next US election - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries - No EU membership discount for Ukraine just because it was attacked
The LibDems always release an internal poll on the eve of byelections that show that - shock - it's incredibly tight and only they can beat the Conservatives.
It's amazing how their polling always picks up these incredibly tight contests.
I expect it also picks up the other contests, where the Lib Dems are not in contention. But there is no point in the Lib Dems' publicising those. So you never hear about them, young Smithson. And then you make sweeping generalisations based on very incomplete evidence.
For what it is worth, I think the result in Tiv & Hon will be very close. The Lib Dems have pulled out all the stops on this one. So it just depends on how many electors fall for the Tory dirty tricks and downright lies.
Indeed, I think this will be a greater achievement than North Shropshire if the party wins. The Conservatives seem to have "got it" in the last week or two - they've pushed the candidate forward, published a nice neutral "paper" which solidly endorses the "local" candidate etc. About 30 years behind the times but in Conservative terms, not bad.
One or two grumpy old sods on here tonight - nothing stopping the Conservatives publishing their own poll showing they are 10-15 points ahead if that's the case. As for whether any by-election "matters", depends what you mean. Is it going to end the fighting in Ukraine, world poverty or reverse climate change? Probably not.
There have been significant by-elections, there have been less significant ones - will this bring the Johnsonian edifarce to its knees? Again, probably not but it puts pressure on backbenchers who now start looking over their shoulders and wondering if their seat, which seemed so favourable in 2019, might be in a different and angrier mood and with the opposition winning councillors perhaps it's not as safe as it appears...
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
It's also easy to forget to factor in the social cost of uprooting older people from the houses and communities where they have built up support networks. Kicking granny out of her house (persuading them to downsize) is not just an economic transaction, it is a social one with potentially bigger costs than the economic one.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
It depends. If you build suitable accommodation in the local area the same support network can be there, in fact going to live in say a community for older folks could actually be an improvement (many oldies in the UK are very lonely).
The problem is there is huge inertia even if it could be an improvement. I remember my granny wouldn't move from the same 3 bed council house she had been in for 50+ years. See was effectively bed blocking a 3 bed house when it can been 30+ years since her kids left and my grandfather passed away.
Eventually she was convinced to move (closer to my uncle and into a warden control set of apartments) and then bemoaned why she didn't move sooner...mainly because she found herself a nice new gentleman friend.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
There's a reason why most of Europe rents (though it's starting to change). Typically they solve the housing problem with lots of blocks of flats, and owning a flat in a block is a pain as everything around you is out of your control. Moreover, they are generally less wedded to the DIY cult, so the idea of owning a place and gradually doing it up yourself is pretty alien.
Basically, though, you need to put aside or borrow around 20 years' rent to buy somewhere. Unless you plan to have somewhere to pass on to family, why would you want to spend 20 years focusing on acquiring one asset which you'll finally own when you're old? Why not just rent and enjoy life in lots of different ways, all of them costing smaller amounts? Yes, when you're 75 you'll still have rent to pay, but by then maybe you won't miss the other joys of an active life so much?
The point is simply that it's daft to be dogmatic about it. Some people want to focus on owning their home, some don't. There's no right or wrong to it.
I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:
1) greater labour mobility 2) savings and other capital are invested in productive businesses rather than bricks and mortar.
Renting vs Owning: it's like electoral systems, each has their own peculiarities, and positives and negatives. And proponents of each can't see why anyone would prefer a different system.
Needless to say, there are places with high levels of home ownership and fucked economies (Italy). Indeed, for every permutation, you can find joy and despair.
Which makes me think it probably isn't a dominant factor in economic performance.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
In the case of SpaceX, though, isn't it specifically about the hushing up of sexual harassment?
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
The energy provider market reminds me of sub-prime mortgage crisis. All these companies who have f##k all resources or experience, just a call centre and a flash harry who thinks they can trade energy markets better than the institutions, and then trying to undercut the established players by not having any reserves if there is a big swing.
Remember all the 118 directory enquiry services that were set up when such enquiries were opened up? The vast majority died a death. Are any still going aside from 118 118 (the one with the two runners in the ads)?
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
The energy provider market reminds me of sub-prime mortgage crisis. All these companies who have f##k all resources or experience, just a call centre and a flash harry who thinks they can trade energy markets better than the institutions, and then trying to undercut the established players by not having any reserves if there is a big swing.
Very much so.
This week we've started out regular stress testing to see how our firm could cope with another global financial crisis, for the LOLS we've also thrown in two major wars, one involving an oil producing country, and a global pandemic.
These energy companies couldn't cope with a stiff fart aimed in their direction.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
On SNL, he admitted to being on the spectrum. A feature of that is a lack of innate empathy, which no doubt compounds issues of people management.
IMV that's a terrible excuse. 'being on the spectrum' (self-diagnosed) is not an excuse for treating other poorly.
Mrs J is almost certainly on the spectrum, and our son might be (he is being tested atm). I don't know about me, but I have certain traits that may be (hence the walking and running). I don't want 'being on the spectrum' as being associated with such mistreatment of others.
Put simply: a CEO being 'on the spectrum' and a really poor person-manager may be good for a small start-up with a few dozen employees, where they know and deal with the CEO personally. If it means you mistreat people, it's sh*t if the company has thousands of employees.
I'd strongly argue that 'being on the spectrum' does not give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse others.
I never offered it as an excuse, but rather as an explanation.
I would agree that, as soon as someone takes on a role of great social importance, such as CEO of Tesla or Spacex, he or she should be self-aware of his or her personal limitations in managing people, and hire a team that not only has the missing strengths, but can protect the person and their staff from the consequences of those imitations.
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
Following the collapse of my previous provider, I'm paying month by month now - I'm not lending the energy companies any money.
That's the other outrageous thing, most firms charge you more if you don't pay by monthly direct debit, allowing your build up a balance for the winter.
I'm with EDF so hoping the French will not screw me over.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
I didn't think it was just about 'political views' solely.
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
On SNL, he admitted to being on the spectrum. A feature of that is a lack of innate empathy, which no doubt compounds issues of people management.
IMV that's a terrible excuse. 'being on the spectrum' (self-diagnosed) is not an excuse for treating other poorly.
Mrs J is almost certainly on the spectrum, and our son might be (he is being tested atm). I don't know about me, but I have certain traits that may be (hence the walking and running). I don't want 'being on the spectrum' as being associated with such mistreatment of others.
Put simply: a CEO being 'on the spectrum' and a really poor person-manager may be good for a small start-up with a few dozen employees, where they know and deal with the CEO personally. If it means you mistreat people, it's sh*t if the company has thousands of employees.
I'd strongly argue that 'being on the spectrum' does not give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse others.
I never offered it as an excuse, but rather as an explanation.
I would agree that, as soon as someone takes on a role of great social importance, such as CEO of Tesla or Spacex, he or she should be self-aware of his or her personal limitations in managing people, and hire a team that not only has the missing strengths, but can protect the person and their staff from the consequences of those imitations.
Yep, that's very fair. Instead, Musk puts family members on the board.
Who is this minister who has been sent onto Channel 4 News to talk about strikes? Says that everything is marvellous, look how much money we're spending on wages. Does he think people are stupid?
Also enjoyed the dismantling of his "Labour's strike" line. When Mick Lynch the leader of the RMT says "I'm not interested what Keir Starmer thinks, we're not affiliated to his political party and I'm not a member of it".
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
In the case of SpaceX, though, isn't it specifically about the hushing up of sexual harassment?
Not this one. It’s about what Musk is saying on Twitter making them offended. Specifically that he’s voting Republican.
If it were about anything to do with what’s actually happening at their place of work, it would of course be different.
That’s not to say they haven’t had other problems, they certainly have. It’s that this one falls under insubordination rather than whistleblowing.
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
It is indeed that bad. In fact, the deeper you go, the worse it gets
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
It's also easy to forget to factor in the social cost of uprooting older people from the houses and communities where they have built up support networks. Kicking granny out of her house (persuading them to downsize) is not just an economic transaction, it is a social one with potentially bigger costs than the economic one.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
It depends. If you build suitable accommodation in the local area the same support network can be there, in fact going to live in say a community for older folks could actually be an improvement (many oldies in the UK are very lonely).
The problem is there is huge inertia even if it could be an improvement. I remember my granny wouldn't move from the same 3 bed council house she had been in for 50+ years. See was effectively bed blocking a 3 bed house when it can been 30+ years since her kids left and my grandfather passed away.
Eventually she was convinced to move (closer to my uncle and into a warden control set of apartments) and then bemoaned why she didn't move sooner...mainly because she found herself a nice new gentleman friend.
Whereas my mother did downsize from a 3 bed semi to be nearer my sister some 100 miles away, and had a miserable last 15 years of a life of low-grade depression, inactivity and no social circle outside of offspring.
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
The energy provider market reminds me of sub-prime mortgage crisis. All these companies who have f##k all resources or experience, just a call centre and a flash harry who thinks they can trade energy markets better than the institutions, and then trying to undercut the established players by not having any reserves if there is a big swing.
Very much so.
This week we've started out regular stress testing to see how our firm could cope with another global financial crisis, for the LOLS we've also thrown in two major wars, one involving an oil producing country, and a global pandemic.
These energy companies couldn't cope with a stiff fart aimed in their direction.
Given the government acts in guarantee of last resort, you would have thought that bare minimum these companies would have to have a certain level of reserve on hand for potential market turbulence in relation to the number of customers. Its not like they are flogging fidget spinners on Amazon (although I have a feeling quite a lot of these companies are run by people who used to do that).
Basically the way it seems to be setup, these upset energy providers can take huge risk, with all the downside, the UK taxpayer left on the hook to pick up the fall out. And obviously its anti-competitive in that they just undercut the "responsible" bigger players who actually hedge their positions at a cost.
Foxy asked: "I do wonder whether there is a correlation between high percentage of renting and economic growth for 2 reasons:"
I haven't seen any formal studies, but I have long thought, on general economics grounds, that the US tax system, by encouraging the wealthy to invest immense sums in mansions, has hurt our economic growth.
(Elon Musk set a good example, recently, by living in an inexpensive, innovative, manufactured home. The video of it being set up is entertaining, I think.)
Elon Musk is a sh*t part 12241243 of 3342423o09767tqwe:
Free speech is fine and dandy for multi billionaires. Their employees... less so.
Don't believe the hype about Musk.
Not a massive Musk fan, but using the company email system to rile up employees against the CEO for his personal views, does sound like something for which one can expect to be fired at any employer.
Look at the chaos that was The Washington post last week, for another example of how corporate America is going mad at the moment.
Or look at the chaos that was Disney a few weeks earlier, with employees threatening to quit en masse unless the company took a particular stance on a controversial piece of legislation in Florida - for which the company lost a massive tax exemption they’d enjoyed for decades.
…As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
You can tell it’s a toxic company, when people are bringing external politics into the office, and using company resources to complain about the political views of others.
In the case of SpaceX, though, isn't it specifically about the hushing up of sexual harassment?
Hmmm - the letter contains a mishmash of stuff.
Saying that Elon's behaviour on Twitter is unacceptable is not... errr... acceptable.
On the other hand, drawing attention to the company's lack of enforcement of harrasment policies is fair game.
I looked for meaningful socioeconomic differences between Tiverton & Honiton and North Shropshire. The only one I found was a few percentage points of a higher retired population in Tiverton and Honiton, which probably means incomers from elsewhere in England buying with housing equity. On balance, that is a slight disadvantage to the Lib Dems to me, because more people are likely to have voted in Conservative-Labour contests for most of their adult life - though the party _can_ do well in some seats with large populations of retired-incomers.
As for other dynamics, Johnson got a Ukraine bounce, then the Ukraine and cost of living slump.
The reasons to think that this by-election will not follow other Tory-LD by-elections are not ones that exist at the macro level, but rather would be based on voting patterns on the ground. Without local knowledge, I wouldn't veer too far away from the assumption of a massive winning swing.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
It's also easy to forget to factor in the social cost of uprooting older people from the houses and communities where they have built up support networks. Kicking granny out of her house (persuading them to downsize) is not just an economic transaction, it is a social one with potentially bigger costs than the economic one.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
It depends. If you build suitable accommodation in the local area the same support network can be there, in fact going to live in say a community for older folks could actually be an improvement (many oldies in the UK are very lonely).
The problem is there is huge inertia even if it could be an improvement. I remember my granny wouldn't move from the same 3 bed council house she had been in for 50+ years. See was effectively bed blocking a 3 bed house when it can been 30+ years since her kids left and my grandfather passed away.
Eventually she was convinced to move (closer to my uncle and into a warden control set of apartments) and then bemoaned why she didn't move sooner...mainly because she found herself a nice new gentleman friend.
Whereas my mother did downsize from a 3 bed semi to be nearer my sister some 100 miles away, and had a miserable last 15 years of a life of low-grade depression, inactivity and no social circle outside of offspring.
And that is why I said any policy should come with building suitable accommodation in the local area. In the UK, 1-2 bedroom apartments seems to dominant every new development. You could easily again provide incentive that there was a certain number which are designed towards older people.
Mélenchon update: Yesterday night's judgement of "success" has been revised by Mr Mélenchon to "disappointment". Took a while to read the room after the election of almost 100 extreme-right deputies. All the other parties have abandoned his Nupes alliance now that they've been elected, which means they can rat on their promises to cause conflict with the EU, defund the police, etc. As for Macron, right now no other party wants to join the government, but he can probably cobble together majorities on a vote-by-vote basis; when that fails, he can POSSIBLY dissolve the National Assembly.
Macron will almost certainly now need to govern with the centre right Les Republicains to get a majority, certainly if he wants to get his economic reforms through. Melenchon and Le Pen will not give him an inch on that.
Calling another election a year or two later may not lead to a majority either, as his fellow liberal Trudeau discovered last year in Canada
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
The energy provider market reminds me of sub-prime mortgage crisis. All these companies who have f##k all resources or experience, just a call centre and a flash harry who thinks they can trade energy markets better than the institutions, and then trying to undercut the established players by not having any reserves if there is a big swing.
Very much so.
This week we've started out regular stress testing to see how our firm could cope with another global financial crisis, for the LOLS we've also thrown in two major wars, one involving an oil producing country, and a global pandemic.
These energy companies couldn't cope with a stiff fart aimed in their direction.
Given the government acts in guarantee of last resort, you would have thought that bare minimum these companies would have to have a certain level of reserve on hand for potential market turbulence in relation to the number of customers. Its not like they are flogging fidget spinners on Amazon (although I have a feeling quite a lot of these companies are run by people who used to do that).
Basically the way it seems to be setup, these upset energy providers can take huge risk, with all the downside, the UK taxpayer left on the hook to pick up the fall out. And obviously its anti-competitive in that they just undercut the "responsible" bigger players who actually hedge their positions at a cost.
Time for minimum capital adequacy requirements for these gits.
Or make the directors personally liable for any shortfall.
Some slight discrepancies in the French legislative results - Wiki is saying one thing but I'm also seeing the following numbers:
Ensemble: 252 NUPES: 142 National Rally: 91 UDC: 72 Other Left: 13 Regionalists: 7
A comfortable majority for Ensemble-UDC you'd think but UDC's leader Jacob wasn't particularly helpful overnight suggesting any Government formation is going to take some time.
Looking at what actually happened yesterday - after Round 1, in terms of the party leading, the scores were:
NUPES and National Rally lost ground but Ensemble and especially UDC advanced. We'd need more information on how many seats Ensemble and UDC won from second but I think we can say there was a stronger aversion to NUPES winning than there was to National Rally but both lost out to the centre and centre-right parties in second place.
Macron will almost certainly now need to govern with the centre right Les Republicains to get a majority, certainly if he wants to get his economic reforms through. Melenchon and Le Pen will not give him an inch on that.
Calling another election a year or two later may not lead to a majority either, as his fellow liberal Trudeau discovered last year in Canada
I've not done the detail but UDC led in 50 seats after round one and ended up with 72 which, will still a big loss on last time, was better than might have been expected. I don't know whether it was a simple matter of securing the 50 they had and winning 22 from second place (primarily at the expense of NUPES?) or whether it was more nuanced.
Ensemble led in 205 after round one and ended up on 245 (or 252). That would suggest they held the majority of their first round leads and picked up seats (again primarily from NUPES).
I'd love to look at the 110 seats RN led after the first round and see in how many of these they held off NUPES and the extent to which they lost out to Ensemble and UDC candidates from second place.
Any thoughts - do you think UDC won seats mainly from where they were second to NUPES or could they have won from second place to RN aided by other centre and centre-left votes?
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
It's taken me 6 months just to extract around £100 in compensaion from my energy supplier, and that months after they agreed with the Ombudsman to do so, and they still haven't fixed the problem that led to complaint (and seem to have stopped bothering to try to fix it).
So not looking forward to the base level aggravation with the companies being even higher.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
It's also easy to forget to factor in the social cost of uprooting older people from the houses and communities where they have built up support networks. Kicking granny out of her house (persuading them to downsize) is not just an economic transaction, it is a social one with potentially bigger costs than the economic one.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
It depends. If you build suitable accommodation in the local area the same support network can be there, in fact going to live in say a community for older folks could actually be an improvement (many oldies in the UK are very lonely).
The problem is there is huge inertia even if it could be an improvement. I remember my granny wouldn't move from the same 3 bed council house she had been in for 50+ years. See was effectively bed blocking a 3 bed house when it can been 30+ years since her kids left and my grandfather passed away.
Eventually she was convinced to move (closer to my uncle and into a warden control set of apartments) and then bemoaned why she didn't move sooner...mainly because she found herself a nice new gentleman friend.
Whereas my mother did downsize from a 3 bed semi to be nearer my sister some 100 miles away, and had a miserable last 15 years of a life of low-grade depression, inactivity and no social circle outside of offspring.
And that is why I said any policy should come with building suitable accommodation in the local area. In the UK, 1-2 bedroom apartments seems to dominant every new development. You could easily again provide incentive that there was a certain number which are designed towards older people.
If its just the old folk involved many probably would down size if there was suitable accomodation in the area.....however you are overlooking the reasons to not downsize....
a) old folk like their family to come visit something they will likely do less often if the visit includes staying in a hotel for a week each time.
b) they see keeping the house as a trust to leave to kids or grandkids as a way of ensuring they either get a decent chunk towards their own property or somewhere to carry on as a family home. Lets face it not worth selling up to watch your cash eaten by inflation.
c) Those extra bedrooms get repurposed for hobby rooms. For example my father turned his smallest bedroom into his fly tying workshop untill his eye sight got to bad and made a little cash selling them well into his mid to late 70's.
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
Do local people actually like her?
She is a local headteacher and businesswoman, who knows the area well. She also performed confidently at the hustings. She is miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire
Macron will almost certainly now need to govern with the centre right Les Republicains to get a majority, certainly if he wants to get his economic reforms through. Melenchon and Le Pen will not give him an inch on that.
Calling another election a year or two later may not lead to a majority either, as his fellow liberal Trudeau discovered last year in Canada
I've not done the detail but UDC led in 50 seats after round one and ended up with 72 which, will still a big loss on last time, was better than might have been expected. I don't know whether it was a simple matter of securing the 50 they had and winning 22 from second place (primarily at the expense of NUPES?) or whether it was more nuanced.
Ensemble led in 205 after round one and ended up on 245 (or 252). That would suggest they held the majority of their first round leads and picked up seats (again primarily from NUPES).
I'd love to look at the 110 seats RN led after the first round and see in how many of these they held off NUPES and the extent to which they lost out to Ensemble and UDC candidates from second place.
Any thoughts - do you think UDC won seats mainly from where they were second to NUPES or could they have won from second place to RN aided by other centre and centre-left votes?
I expect UDC won seats against NUPES and RN much as Ensemble did against them when they became by default the centrist option.
Even though the UDC have now been overtaken by NUPES and RN as the main opposition party in the National Assembly their influence is ironically stronger as Macron has lost his party's majority and needs UDC support to govern and get legislation through
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
I guess we've really learned nothing whatsoever based on those two points.
Apparently his actual reply when asked about Ukraine joining the EU was: "Just because you’ve been attacked doesn’t make you better when it comes to the rule of law."
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
I guess we've really learned nothing whatsoever based on those two points.
Apparently his actual reply when asked about Ukraine joining the EU was: "Just because you’ve been attacked doesn’t make you better when it comes to the rule of law."
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
I guess we've really learned nothing whatsoever based on those two points.
Apparently his actual reply when asked about Ukraine joining the EU was: "Just because you’ve been attacked doesn’t make you better when it comes to the rule of law."
I can think of more delicate ways of making the point that admission to the EU will still require meeting qualifying criteria. Ones which don't come over as super judgey and an odd priority right now, given it will take years anyway.
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
She was taken away, and subsequently raped, by a man she met at the police station, who was a visitor unrelated to her case?
That's what I'm inferring. But you can see why it took a few reads.
I've not done the detail but UDC led in 50 seats after round one and ended up with 72 which, will still a big loss on last time, was better than might have been expected. I don't know whether it was a simple matter of securing the 50 they had and winning 22 from second place (primarily at the expense of NUPES?) or whether it was more nuanced.
Ensemble led in 205 after round one and ended up on 245 (or 252). That would suggest they held the majority of their first round leads and picked up seats (again primarily from NUPES).
I'd love to look at the 110 seats RN led after the first round and see in how many of these they held off NUPES and the extent to which they lost out to Ensemble and UDC candidates from second place.
Any thoughts - do you think UDC won seats mainly from where they were second to NUPES or could they have won from second place to RN aided by other centre and centre-left votes?
I expect UDC won seats against NUPES and RN much as Ensemble did against them when they became by default the centrist option.
Even though the UDC have now been overtaken by NUPES and RN as the main opposition party in the National Assembly their influence is ironically stronger as Macron has lost his party's majority and needs UDC support to govern and get legislation through
The problem is how close does Jacob want to get to Macron? LR will need to find a better Presidential candidate next time than the disastrous Pecresse and the truth is the former first or second party is now the fourth party in the National Assembly.
LR's problem will be if Macron has a successor (Edouard Philippe) he effectively nominates to take on the likes of Le Pen and Melenchon, how will their candidate get to the last two and without that LR voters will split between the centrist and Le Pen to stop Melenchon (you'd think)?
LR have to hope Macron's political movement doesn't survive him but I suspect Macron has already considered that and will put Edouard Philippe forward as his "successor".
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
She was taken away, and subsequently raped, by a man she met at the police station, who was a visitor unrelated to her case?
I don't mean to get all grammar Nazi here - not least because of her horrendous experience - but it would have been much more clearly written as:
"She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and who raped her numerous times"
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
High levels of stamp duty discourage trading down, resulting in inefficient use of the housing stock.
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
Do local people actually like her?
She is a local headteacher and businesswoman, who knows the area well. She also performed confidently at the hustings. She is miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire
"confidently" is one way of putting it. She did not impress several PBers.
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
Do local people actually like her?
She is a local headteacher and businesswoman, who knows the area well. She also performed confidently at the hustings. She is miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire
She got booed, jeered and called out for "shame" at the hustings. As we all saw. We are not stupid as you think we are.
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
Do local people actually like her?
She is a local headteacher and businesswoman, who knows the area well. She also performed confidently at the hustings. She is miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire
She got booed, jeered and called out for "shame" at the hustings. As we all saw. We are not stupid as you think we are.
That was the hustings. And what a crowd does at the hustings does not necessarily reflect on the attributes of the candidate. even if you may be right in this case.
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
Do local people actually like her?
She is a local headteacher and businesswoman, who knows the area well. She also performed confidently at the hustings. She is miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire
She got booed, jeered and called out for "shame" at the hustings. As we all saw. We are not stupid as you think we are.
'Helen Hurford is born and bred here,” she said of herself. “Helen Hurford is Tiverton and Honiton. Helen Hurford will fight to bring as much investment to Tiverton and Honiton as she can.”
More ridicule and guffawing from the hall, but there is a sense, even among the Liberal Democrats – that their opponent is beginning to hit her stride just when it counts. The usually assured Lib Dem candidate Richard Foord was nervous and sounded weak on a climate question. Perhaps the possibility of a victory he may not have expected is getting to him. But he was more comfortable on the economy, gaining the approval of the audience for the Lib Dem policy of cutting VAT by 2.5 per cent.' https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/tiverton-by-election-jeers-tory-helen-hurford-devon-poll-conservative-1693957
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
I think that is true as well.
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
It's also easy to forget to factor in the social cost of uprooting older people from the houses and communities where they have built up support networks. Kicking granny out of her house (persuading them to downsize) is not just an economic transaction, it is a social one with potentially bigger costs than the economic one.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
It depends. If you build suitable accommodation in the local area the same support network can be there, in fact going to live in say a community for older folks could actually be an improvement (many oldies in the UK are very lonely).
The problem is there is huge inertia even if it could be an improvement. I remember my granny wouldn't move from the same 3 bed council house she had been in for 50+ years. See was effectively bed blocking a 3 bed house when it can been 30+ years since her kids left and my grandfather passed away.
Eventually she was convinced to move (closer to my uncle and into a warden control set of apartments) and then bemoaned why she didn't move sooner...mainly because she found herself a nice new gentleman friend.
Whereas my mother did downsize from a 3 bed semi to be nearer my sister some 100 miles away, and had a miserable last 15 years of a life of low-grade depression, inactivity and no social circle outside of offspring.
And that is why I said any policy should come with building suitable accommodation in the local area. In the UK, 1-2 bedroom apartments seems to dominant every new development. You could easily again provide incentive that there was a certain number which are designed towards older people.
If its just the old folk involved many probably would down size if there was suitable accomodation in the area.....however you are overlooking the reasons to not downsize....
a) old folk like their family to come visit something they will likely do less often if the visit includes staying in a hotel for a week each time.
b) they see keeping the house as a trust to leave to kids or grandkids as a way of ensuring they either get a decent chunk towards their own property or somewhere to carry on as a family home. Lets face it not worth selling up to watch your cash eaten by inflation.
c) Those extra bedrooms get repurposed for hobby rooms. For example my father turned his smallest bedroom into his fly tying workshop untill his eye sight got to bad and made a little cash selling them well into his mid to late 70's.
My late father would have been heartbroken to lose his huge garden and his woodwork shop and be moved into a typical oldies development. I think he'd have turned his face to the wall and died.
Fortunately he did not deteriorate before his demise to the extent that it was necessary to persuade him out, but I did wonder on occasion which would win first!
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
I guess we've really learned nothing whatsoever based on those two points.
Apparently his actual reply when asked about Ukraine joining the EU was: "Just because you’ve been attacked doesn’t make you better when it comes to the rule of law."
I can think of more delicate ways of making the point that admission to the EU will still require meeting qualifying criteria. Ones which don't come over as super judgey and an odd priority right now, given it will take years anyway.
I wonder if Boris, by constantly seizing the limelight as Ukraine's ally-in-chief, is starting to put other countries' noses out of joint, especially since they're closer to the front line from a geo-political perspective. This worries me. We all know how fickle Boris is with his allegiances. Zelenskiy could be left without any friends.
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
She was taken away, and subsequently raped, by a man she met at the police station, who was a visitor unrelated to her case?
I don't mean to get all grammar Nazi here - not least because of her horrendous experience - but it would have been much more clearly written as:
"She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and who raped her numerous times"
I suspect there’s something being very carefully not said there.
Did the man and the girl know each other previously? Did the police let him take her, at either his request or her request? Was there an issue with the movements of either the man or the girl at the police station, a breakdown in what should have been segregation?
I've not done the detail but UDC led in 50 seats after round one and ended up with 72 which, will still a big loss on last time, was better than might have been expected. I don't know whether it was a simple matter of securing the 50 they had and winning 22 from second place (primarily at the expense of NUPES?) or whether it was more nuanced.
Ensemble led in 205 after round one and ended up on 245 (or 252). That would suggest they held the majority of their first round leads and picked up seats (again primarily from NUPES).
I'd love to look at the 110 seats RN led after the first round and see in how many of these they held off NUPES and the extent to which they lost out to Ensemble and UDC candidates from second place.
Any thoughts - do you think UDC won seats mainly from where they were second to NUPES or could they have won from second place to RN aided by other centre and centre-left votes?
I expect UDC won seats against NUPES and RN much as Ensemble did against them when they became by default the centrist option.
Even though the UDC have now been overtaken by NUPES and RN as the main opposition party in the National Assembly their influence is ironically stronger as Macron has lost his party's majority and needs UDC support to govern and get legislation through
The problem is how close does Jacob want to get to Macron? LR will need to find a better Presidential candidate next time than the disastrous Pecresse and the truth is the former first or second party is now the fourth party in the National Assembly.
LR's problem will be if Macron has a successor (Edouard Philippe) he effectively nominates to take on the likes of Le Pen and Melenchon, how will their candidate get to the last two and without that LR voters will split between the centrist and Le Pen to stop Melenchon (you'd think)?
LR have to hope Macron's political movement doesn't survive him but I suspect Macron has already considered that and will put Edouard Philippe forward as his "successor".
To win next time LR effectively have to recapture the voters they have lost to En Marche. En Marche is now the party of most former centre right voters, especially pensioners, while Melenchon has won over most former Socialist Party voters.
So LR need to get somewhat closer to EM so that when Macron cannot run again next time they are ready and waiting to fill the gap, perhaps with Xavier Bertrand who would have been a better candidate than Pecresse this time.
Philippe has nowhere near Macron's charisma. Though having said that Philippe was a former UMP representative in the National Assembly anyway, the UMP being Chirac and Sarkozy's party which became Les Republicains in 2015, so in effect even if he does succeed Macron that is a centre right Presidency, whereas Macron was a finance minister in Hollande's Socialist government. Les Republicains and En Marche could even then merge
While the Tories will lose Wakefield, I think they narrowly hold Tiverton and Honiton by a couple of hundred with a good local candidate. Much like Labour scraped home in Batley and Spen last summer when they were doing worse in the polls
Lol @ good candidate
Why do you think the Tory candidate in Tiv & Hon is a good one, young HY? She strikes me as a bit of a fly-by-night character, who never stays anywhere long, and moves on to the next thing before she gets found out. I suppose that, in this way, she could be seen as a good representative of the present Conservative Party.
Do local people actually like her?
She is a local headteacher and businesswoman, who knows the area well. She also performed confidently at the hustings. She is miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire
She got booed, jeered and called out for "shame" at the hustings. As we all saw. We are not stupid as you think we are.
'Helen Hurford is born and bred here,” she said of herself. “Helen Hurford is Tiverton and Honiton. Helen Hurford will fight to bring as much investment to Tiverton and Honiton as she can.”
More ridicule and guffawing from the hall, but there is a sense, even among the Liberal Democrats – that their opponent is beginning to hit her stride just when it counts. The usually assured Lib Dem candidate Richard Foord was nervous and sounded weak on a climate question. Perhaps the possibility of a victory he may not have expected is getting to him. But he was more comfortable on the economy, gaining the approval of the audience for the Lib Dem policy of cutting VAT by 2.5 per cent.' https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/tiverton-by-election-jeers-tory-helen-hurford-devon-poll-conservative-1693957
She got photographed with moo-cows and Mr Johnson. An interesting strategy in the current climate, especially with farmers upset.
And that’s the attraction of conspiracy theories. These people want someone to be in control. When you think that no one is in control, it’s actually quite scary.
Not enough houses = charge as much as they want or you're homeless
The key point - which is not a very complicated one - is that housing prices are set ultimately by supply and demand.
And history suggests, it's much more pleasant to bring house prices into line by increasing supply, than by reducing incomes (and therefore demand).
WRT renting: there are good reasons for people to rent. Owning a home is great if it's somewhere you plan on being for a long, long time. It's not such a great idea if you think your needs might change in the near future, or that you may need to move somewhere else. It's also (almost) always going to be the case that people moving out of home/university aren't immediately in a place (financially) to buy their own home.
Lots of talk about imminent house price fall, I am unconvinced as are E&Y Item Club
To understand the housing market all you have to do is ask yourself: on the night of 15 April 1912 were the officers of RMS Titanic saying to one another We must do something to make lifeboat places more *affordable*
Not certain what the point of that analogy is.
If there were enough lifeboats then more lives would have been saved, that was lesson from RMS Titanic.
If there were more houses then more houses would be affordable.
Current "planning" policy is designed to constrain houses/lifeboats in order to make the houses/lifeboats that people already are in possession of more valuable, rather than ensuring there is an adequate supply for everyone.
Building lots more houses is not necessarily sufficient to fix the problem, but it’s absolutely a pre-requisite.
Not necessarily. You could have pro-emigration policies to aim to reduce the population and reduce housing pressure that way. Or you could have policies that encouraged more efficient use of existing housing stock. If you could encourage empty-nesters to downsize housing would be distributed more optimally. If you somehow managed to reduce the divorce rate then you would reduce the rate of formation of new households, and reverse the decline in average household size.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
I think the rise and rise of the single occupant household is a significant part of the housing shortage. It is about 8 million households nationally, and a lot won't be bedsits.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
I wonder much is that driven by people just wanting to live like that in 1 bed apartments and how much is family break downs, resulting in two single parents requiring 2-3 bed property for their kids.
This may be unfair prejudice, but I wonder how much the issue is empty nesters deciding that they neither need to, or want to, downsize.
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
High levels of stamp duty discourage trading down, resulting in inefficient use of the housing stock.
Yes. At the macro level, I can see the problem. But I have three children. And once they leave home, I can't see that I'll be in a hurry to downsize. I'll want a house which cam accommodate them all when they come and visit me with their families. So I'm certainly not rushing to judge.
The answer, if course, is for everyone to end up in the same town. But I know very few examples of that.
Scholz's foreign policy advisor spoke at a conference:
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev: - Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China - Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
I guess we've really learned nothing whatsoever based on those two points.
Apparently his actual reply when asked about Ukraine joining the EU was: "Just because you’ve been attacked doesn’t make you better when it comes to the rule of law."
I can think of more delicate ways of making the point that admission to the EU will still require meeting qualifying criteria. Ones which don't come over as super judgey and an odd priority right now, given it will take years anyway.
I wonder if Boris, by constantly seizing the limelight as Ukraine's ally-in-chief, is starting to put other countries' noses out of joint, especially since they're closer to the front line from a geo-political perspective. This worries me. We all know how fickle Boris is with his allegiances. Zelenskiy could be left without any friends.
"So, Mr Johnson. Why would EU membership be great for Ukraine, but shite for Britain?"
I mean, can we just step back and absorb the enormity of this
“Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals”
The guy who was revealed as a mass rapist and sexual terrorist in Rochdale was also employed by Oldham council. As a “welfare officer”. How the fuck does something like that happen without incredible levels of corruption and back-scratching, with added rape? Indeed, thousands of rapes over many years?
We bleat on and on about fucking wallpaper in Number 10, but this is off the dial
“The ringleader of a notorious grooming gang was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council, a major report has revealed.
An independent review said Shabir Ahmed, who led the sexual abuse ring in Rochdale, was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre during his time working for the local authority.
Despite multiple concerns being raised about him and his arrest for the sexual assault of children, police failed to tell his employers.
"If this had happened, it may have potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children..." the report states, citing "serious multiple failures" by both GMP and the local authority.”
From the report in the Telegraph, the following bit sticks out:
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
She was taken away, and subsequently raped, by a man she met at the police station, who was a visitor unrelated to her case?
I don't mean to get all grammar Nazi here - not least because of her horrendous experience - but it would have been much more clearly written as:
"She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and who raped her numerous times"
I suspect there’s something being very carefully not said there.
Did the man and the girl know each other previously? Did the police let him take her, at either his request or her request? Was there an issue with the movements of either the man or the girl at the police station, a breakdown in what should have been segregation?
From the report
• She had been in Oldham town centre with three friends. They had been shopping and ended up in the grounds of Oldham Parish Church. While at this location, Sophie states she was indecently assaulted by an Asian male known only as Ali. • She reported that she went to the police station and was told to “reattend with an adult when she was not drunk”. • While she was in the police station, she was beckoned by two males who asked if she wanted to get in their car. “Scared to go home. Two guys winked at me and asked to go to the car, near camera at police station front door. Asked me to chill in his car. I said okay, other went into police station. I went with them. One had to take in his driving licence, we waited round corner in car.” • They waited in the car for 10 minutes for a third male who Sophie said was inside the police station. Sophie stated that one of the men raped her in the car. Sophie also disclosed that she was driven to a petrol station, which she was able to identify, where money was drawn out of a cash machine by one of her assailants • At approximately 10.30pm Sophie was dropped off near Werneth Park. Sophie asked a man for directions; he said he would help her and invited her into his house. While inside the house, the man raped her. Sophie was given money by this man to pay her bus fare. She then left the address. This address was later identified as the home of Offender G. • Sophie went on to say that she was then picked up by another male, Offender H, in a green car, he told her he would help her. Sophie then states that he took her to an address, later identified as Address A. While at this address she was raped over several hours by five males. The following day, she was taken by one of the males to her home address. The crime report states that the matter was referred to a social worker in Operation Messenger on 30 October 2006,who conducted a search of all relevant records. Following the investigation into this series of incidents only two arrests were made
Comments
Part of the point is that Musk goes on about free speech - especially in his takeover of Twitter. But employees expressing concern internally within his company? Sack 'em.
It's yet another example where Musk's image is in stark contrast to his reality.
If they were trying to get a group together to talk about quality control or safety issues at work, or an accident waiting to happen, that would of course be completely different.
There might be downsides to all of these approaches, but they're definitely alternatives that could bring supply back into line with demand without building lots more houses.
These things are choices. We should probably be better at exploring a wider range of alternatives so that, even if we come to the same conclusion, we might pursue that policy with more determination, knowing that there isn't any easy fix.
But most "debates" in politics are attempts at gotcha moments to paint the other side as having malevolent intent. I'm willing to accept that this might be because the results of their policy failures often makes that a compelling conclusion. Do our politicians actually want to fix the housing crisis? The optimal outcome for them is not to fix it, but for people to believe that they really want to and are trying their best.
However. Those that drive the most, particularly for pleasure, tend to have the highest incomes. Many of the lowest paid go to work and back and not a great deal more.
*) A journalist retweets a bad joke;
*) He gets suspended for a month without pay
*) Another journalist (who herself sued - and lost - in a court case against the paper she works for last year) makes a big deal of it.
*) She gets dismissed.
I cannot see what she expected the Post to do against the original retweeting journalist. The situations are very different.
As for Musk: another point is that both Tesla and SpaceX have been accused (and sometimes in court proven) to have toxic work cultures. It is clear that the corporate structure is borken when it comes to employee rights and complaints. Especially if those complaints are against the head honcho.
Tesla is a bad company.
(Runs for cover)
We also have the crazy case at the Athletic where it was revealed "protected" groups were given special meeting with the boss under previous leadership, which the NYT have now said no, no more mental health suffers weekly meeting etc....and you can't tweet anything that could be perceived as political ever (and nobody is sure does that mean you can't mention trans athletic issues or gun sports?)
My understanding is that it was about much more than whether the was going to vote Republican or not.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html
I don't know if that support your or my interpretation better...
https://www.amazon.com/Unstable-Mentor-Manfred-Kets-Vries/dp/0451626850
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu9JGK_yHo
Seriously: how much are you going to excuse Musk?
https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-subjects-women-nightmarish-sexual-harassment-factory-lawsuit-2021-11-19/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/tesla-sexual-harassment-discrimination-engineer-fired
https://qz.com/work/2082746/elon-musks-tweet-captures-everyday-sexism-faced-by-women-in-stem/
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/14/22835181/tesla-lawsuit-sexual-harassment-six-women
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-engineer-alleges-racial-discrimination-harassment-lawsuit-2021-11?r=US&IR=T
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/esla-hit-with-disturbing-racial-discrimination-allegations-again
And many others. Tesla and SpaceX are classic examples of companies where unionisation might work well for both company and employees. But especially the latter.
There is much to admire about Musk. But as time goes on, I'm becoming firmly of the opinion that he is a total sh*t, and treats people accordingly.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2020#:~:text=The number of people living,the North East of England.
The number of people living alone in the UK has increased by 4.0% over the last 10 years; in 2020 the proportion of one-person households ranged from 22.8% in London to 33.6% in Scotland and the North East of England.
"Sophie went to Oldham police station in October 2006 to report being raped by an Asian man but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and raped numerous times."
I had to read this several times to check that it did indeed say what I thought it had said.
Doesn't really help the couple in their 20s who'd like to start a family though.
But I would say that all corporations - especially large ones - have a corporate culture. Those cultures are very hard to change, and are often inspired by their founders - especially when their founders became influential. If that initial culture is bad, then it can remain so for decades.
Corporate cultures are like supertankers: they take massive effort to change. And the captains who might change course were ingrained in the 'old' culture if they are promoted from within.
In the case of Tesla, Musk is a sh*t. And so Tesla's culture is sh*t. The same with Jobs and Apple (he was not a nice man.)
Some companies escape this to a certain extent: IBM has escaped Watson's (*) influence over the last three decades, and I think Ford has escaped Henry Ford's. The latter is interesting, as Ford family members are still very influential. Disney is another example where the founder's influence looms too large.
(*) Not founder, but massive figure in the company's history
We are a long way from Granny moving in with Janet and John and their 2.4 kids.
I don't remember forecasting an "imminent house price fall".
But, I do think that raising interest rates to try and get on top of inflation would have pretty negative effects on the housing market. I don't think that's a particularly controversial view.
Here’s the letter:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-employees-denounce-ceo-musk-distraction-letter-2022-06-16/
"Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,"
"As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX - every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,"
"SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon's personal brand." It added: "Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone" and "define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior."
So they’re saying they don’t like what Musk is doing on Twitter, and asking the company what they’re going to do about it.
Any company would fire a bunch of employees for such behaviour.
Not a fan of Bill Maher, but that was a good one. Intend to steal 'blubbertweeing'
For what it is worth, I think the result in Tiv & Hon will be very close. The Lib Dems have pulled out all the stops on this one. So it just depends on how many electors fall for the Tory dirty tricks and downright lies.
Only two of more than 3,000 applications for sanctuary submitted by Afghans who worked with British forces or the government during the war have been processed by the Ministry of Defence since April.
There has been a “ballooning” backlog of 23,000 applications to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (ARAP) since October last year, with only one in four, or 23 per cent, having been processed.
The number of staff working on the scheme has been cut by a quarter since December, figures uncovered by the Labour Party reveal.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mod-processes-only-two-of-3-000-refugee-applications-from-afghans-since-april-cjx6k96zv
Thinking about all my relatives in the generation above me, they've all stayed in large houses well beyond their need for, or ability to maintain, them.
Their choice (though it becomes a problem for them eventually), but it leads to lousy use of a resource we've decided to make scarce.
And allegedly they did try alternate methods through internal systems, and got ignored.
Energy suppliers can’t afford to protect all of their customers’ money this winter, the regulator has admitted, as it set out plans designed to prevent more costly company failures.
Suppliers may only be required to ringfence 30 per cent of their customers’ credit balances initially because Ofgem doesn’t want to imperil companies who are using the cash to fund their operations, the regulator said in a consultation.
Ofgem today announced a raft of proposed new rules to “improve the financial health of energy suppliers” and prevent more costly failures such as those seen last year when dozens collapsed, leaving behind a multi-billion pound bill for consumers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/customer-credit-at-risk-this-winter-says-ofgem-as-it-looks-to-prevent-company-failures-323q27589
The problem with this particular demographic is any policies put in place to nudge them to downsize quickly gets spun as literally throwing granny out the house they have lived in for the past 30 years onto the street, just leave them be to live out their years.
The answer to housing issues does not lie in forcing or strongly incentivizing people to do what is not in their own interest, but in other solutions.
Mrs J is almost certainly on the spectrum, and our son might be (he is being tested atm). I don't know about me, but I have certain traits that may be (hence the walking and running). I don't want 'being on the spectrum' as being associated with such mistreatment of others.
Put simply: a CEO being 'on the spectrum' and a really poor person-manager may be good for a small start-up with a few dozen employees, where they know and deal with the CEO personally. If it means you mistreat people, it's sh*t if the company has thousands of employees.
I'd strongly argue that 'being on the spectrum' does not give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse others.
Summing up Jens Plötner @dgapev:
- Don't put Russia and China in one basket. Aim is to reduce rivalry with China
- Very worried about next US election
- Media should focus more on future ties with Russia, less on tank deliveries
- No EU membership discount for Ukraine just because it was attacked
https://twitter.com/noahbarkin/status/1538947558424334336
One or two grumpy old sods on here tonight - nothing stopping the Conservatives publishing their own poll showing they are 10-15 points ahead if that's the case. As for whether any by-election "matters", depends what you mean. Is it going to end the fighting in Ukraine, world poverty or reverse climate change? Probably not.
There have been significant by-elections, there have been less significant ones - will this bring the Johnsonian edifarce to its knees? Again, probably not but it puts pressure on backbenchers who now start looking over their shoulders and wondering if their seat, which seemed so favourable in 2019, might be in a different and angrier mood and with the opposition winning councillors perhaps it's not as safe as it appears...
The problem is there is huge inertia even if it could be an improvement. I remember my granny wouldn't move from the same 3 bed council house she had been in for 50+ years. See was effectively bed blocking a 3 bed house when it can been 30+ years since her kids left and my grandfather passed away.
Eventually she was convinced to move (closer to my uncle and into a warden control set of apartments) and then bemoaned why she didn't move sooner...mainly because she found herself a nice new gentleman friend.
Needless to say, there are places with high levels of home ownership and fucked economies (Italy). Indeed, for every permutation, you can find joy and despair.
Which makes me think it probably isn't a dominant factor in economic performance.
This week we've started out regular stress testing to see how our firm could cope with another global financial crisis, for the LOLS we've also thrown in two major wars, one involving an oil producing country, and a global pandemic.
These energy companies couldn't cope with a stiff fart aimed in their direction.
I would agree that, as soon as someone takes on a role of great social importance, such as CEO of Tesla or Spacex, he or she should be self-aware of his or her personal limitations in managing people, and hire a team that not only has the missing strengths, but can protect the person and their staff from the consequences of those imitations.
I'm with EDF so hoping the French will not screw me over.
Also enjoyed the dismantling of his "Labour's strike" line. When Mick Lynch the leader of the RMT says "I'm not interested what Keir Starmer thinks, we're not affiliated to his political party and I'm not a member of it".
If it were about anything to do with what’s actually happening at their place of work, it would of course be different.
That’s not to say they haven’t had other problems, they certainly have. It’s that this one falls under insubordination rather than whistleblowing.
Basically the way it seems to be setup, these upset energy providers can take huge risk, with all the downside, the UK taxpayer left on the hook to pick up the fall out. And obviously its anti-competitive in that they just undercut the "responsible" bigger players who actually hedge their positions at a cost.
Saying that Elon's behaviour on Twitter is unacceptable is not... errr... acceptable.
On the other hand, drawing attention to the company's lack of enforcement of harrasment policies is fair game.
As for other dynamics, Johnson got a Ukraine bounce, then the Ukraine and cost of living slump.
The reasons to think that this by-election will not follow other Tory-LD by-elections are not ones that exist at the macro level, but rather would be based on voting patterns on the ground. Without local knowledge, I wouldn't veer too far away from the assumption of a massive winning swing.
Calling another election a year or two later may not lead to a majority either, as his fellow liberal Trudeau discovered last year in Canada
Or make the directors personally liable for any shortfall.
Some slight discrepancies in the French legislative results - Wiki is saying one thing but I'm also seeing the following numbers:
Ensemble: 252
NUPES: 142
National Rally: 91
UDC: 72
Other Left: 13
Regionalists: 7
A comfortable majority for Ensemble-UDC you'd think but UDC's leader Jacob wasn't particularly helpful overnight suggesting any Government formation is going to take some time.
Looking at what actually happened yesterday - after Round 1, in terms of the party leading, the scores were:
Ensemble: 205
NUPES: 194
National Rally: 110
UDC: 50
Others: 18
NUPES and National Rally lost ground but Ensemble and especially UDC advanced. We'd need more information on how many seats Ensemble and UDC won from second but I think we can say there was a stronger aversion to NUPES winning than there was to National Rally but both lost out to the centre and centre-right parties in second place.
familylawyer.Ensemble led in 205 after round one and ended up on 245 (or 252). That would suggest they held the majority of their first round leads and picked up seats (again primarily from NUPES).
I'd love to look at the 110 seats RN led after the first round and see in how many of these they held off NUPES and the extent to which they lost out to Ensemble and UDC candidates from second place.
Any thoughts - do you think UDC won seats mainly from where they were second to NUPES or could they have won from second place to RN aided by other centre and centre-left votes?
So not looking forward to the base level aggravation with the companies being even higher.
a) old folk like their family to come visit something they will likely do less often if the visit includes staying in a hotel for a week each time.
b) they see keeping the house as a trust to leave to kids or grandkids as a way of ensuring they either get a decent chunk towards their own property or somewhere to carry on as a family home. Lets face it not worth selling up to watch your cash eaten by inflation.
c) Those extra bedrooms get repurposed for hobby rooms. For example my father turned his smallest bedroom into his fly tying workshop untill his eye sight got to bad and made a little cash selling them well into his mid to late 70's.
Do local people actually like her?
Even though the UDC have now been overtaken by NUPES and RN as the main opposition party in the National Assembly their influence is ironically stronger as Macron has lost his party's majority and needs UDC support to govern and get legislation through
https://twitter.com/noahbarkin/status/1538937254525259776
LR's problem will be if Macron has a successor (Edouard Philippe) he effectively nominates to take on the likes of Le Pen and Melenchon, how will their candidate get to the last two and without that LR voters will split between the centrist and Le Pen to stop Melenchon (you'd think)?
LR have to hope Macron's political movement doesn't survive him but I suspect Macron has already considered that and will put Edouard Philippe forward as his "successor".
"She was then taken away by a man who had been visiting the police station and who raped her numerous times"
Next question.
More ridicule and guffawing from the hall, but there is a sense, even among the Liberal Democrats – that their opponent is beginning to hit her stride just when it counts.
The usually assured Lib Dem candidate Richard Foord was nervous and sounded weak on a climate question. Perhaps the possibility of a victory he may not have expected is getting to him. But he was more comfortable on the economy, gaining the approval of the audience for the Lib Dem policy of cutting VAT by 2.5 per cent.'
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/tiverton-by-election-jeers-tory-helen-hurford-devon-poll-conservative-1693957
Fortunately he did not deteriorate before his demise to the extent that it was necessary to persuade him out, but I did wonder on occasion which would win first!
Did the man and the girl know each other previously? Did the police let him take her, at either his request or her request? Was there an issue with the movements of either the man or the girl at the police station, a breakdown in what should have been segregation?
So LR need to get somewhat closer to EM so that when Macron cannot run again next time they are ready and waiting to fill the gap, perhaps with Xavier Bertrand who would have been a better candidate than Pecresse this time.
Philippe has nowhere near Macron's charisma. Though having said that Philippe was a former UMP representative in the National Assembly anyway, the UMP being Chirac and Sarkozy's party which became Les Republicains in 2015, so in effect even if he does succeed Macron that is a centre right Presidency, whereas Macron was a finance minister in Hollande's Socialist government. Les Republicains and En Marche could even then merge
At the macro level, I can see the problem.
But I have three children. And once they leave home, I can't see that I'll be in a hurry to downsize. I'll want a house which cam accommodate them all when they come and visit me with their families.
So I'm certainly not rushing to judge.
The answer, if course, is for everyone to end up in the same town. But I know very few examples of that.
Does he think Putin will be furious when he finds out what Russia's doing?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61864049
• She had been in Oldham town centre with three friends. They had been shopping and ended up in the grounds of Oldham Parish Church. While at this location, Sophie states she was indecently assaulted by an Asian male known only as Ali.
• She reported that she went to the police station and was told to “reattend with an adult when she was not drunk”.
• While she was in the police station, she was beckoned by two males who asked if she wanted to get in their car. “Scared to go home. Two guys winked at me and asked to go to the car, near camera at police station front door. Asked me to chill in his car. I said okay, other went into police station. I went with them. One had to take in his driving licence, we waited round corner in car.”
• They waited in the car for 10 minutes for a third male who Sophie said was inside the police station. Sophie stated that one of the men raped her in the car. Sophie also disclosed that she was driven to a petrol station, which she was able to identify, where money was drawn out of a cash machine by one of her assailants
• At approximately 10.30pm Sophie was dropped off near Werneth Park. Sophie asked a man for directions; he said he would help her and invited her into his house. While inside the house, the man raped her. Sophie was given money by this man to pay her bus fare. She then left the address. This address was later identified as the home of Offender G.
• Sophie went on to say that she was then picked up by another male, Offender H, in a green car, he told her he would help her. Sophie then states that he took her to an address, later identified as Address A. While at this address she was raped over several hours by five males. The following day, she was taken by one of the males to her home address. The crime report states that the matter was referred to a social worker in Operation Messenger on 30 October 2006,who conducted a search of all relevant records. Following the investigation into this series of incidents only two arrests were made