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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
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.”
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?
Remember these are all approximate, because there's no one official list saying "this man is PS but actually anti-Nupes but without Nupes opposition", and so forth. That said: around 457 first-round leaders won, and around 115 second-place finishers won. Ensemble beat 45 Nupes candidates who led in the first round and lost 7 first-places to Nupes. The same stats for Ensemble and RN were 16-3. For Nupes and RN, it was 8-3. LR-UDI held ALL of their first-round leads and took a bunch of seats from second place: 9 from RN, 8 from Nupes and 5 from Ensemble. In general, there was a pattern of shall we say "efficient voting" in the first round between Ensemble and LR. Where LR was strong, people didn't both voting Ensemble very hard.
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 very much doubt it. Let us set aside the specific issue of EU membership - at least the large majority of EU members won't want Ukraine to join for a very long time, because of the many reforms it will need to make - and think more generally about the strength of support for Ukraine and opposition to Russia. This will be a product of several interdependent factors including how much each country relies on Russian energy; how populations respond to the media campaign (relative levels of sympathy for the Ukrainian and Russian positions); how threatened they feel by Russian intimidation tactics and the possibility of outright military aggression by Russia; and the extent to which they believe that it is more constructive to oppose Russia or to appease it.
I really don't think that an occasional visit to Kyiv by Boris Johnson is a significant factor in the calculus.
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.”
Don’t you have enhanced disclosure in England?
I totally concur. As a teacher I was DBS checked quite regularly when I changed jobs. In my last post because I lived in a school cottage I had to hve evryone who lived in the house checked as well.
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?"
"Ukraine and the UK are at different points in their own development, and each has their own needs and relationships. Whilst the UK believes it should seize the opportunities open to it afforded by being outside of the EU, it recognises that integration with our friends of the EU would be of great benefit to the people of Ukraine, who by dint of their sacrifice and passion have shown how much they also have to offer our former partners in the EU".
It's actually a very easy question to answer in a variety of different ways, even if one would disagree with the UKs brexit position.
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
I hope so @HYUFD. Based on your analysis, I had a small wager on the Conservatives a few weeks ago. Don’t let me down!
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)
They are, because expensive cars tend to use more fuel.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are 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
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?
Odd question. Hardly anyone knows her like virtually all parliamentary candidates ever. There are 86k voters in T and H, it's a huge rural area where one side has little to do with the other.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
That's true of everything HYUFD sees and hears. He goes deaf and blind with a very selective memory when things don't appear / go the way he believes they should do.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
True enough, but was she the one who was quoted as saying she didn't want to play party politics? As that was an amazingly dumb attempt to dodge comment about things.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
Its a rural constituency with a 400k Tory majority. Whilst the audiences for these are self-selecting, that means a decent number should be pro-Tory. And they booed her. Jeered her. In very large numbers. Not just the opposition activists.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
I though the sole purpose of hustings was to allow activists to have fun booing and heckling their opponents. Are you telling me that some people actually go to listen to the candidates in order to choose who to vote for? Has anyone told the candidates?
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
He’s rightly getting ratio’d on Twitter. It is, at the very least, blunderingly tone deaf. He does not even say sorry
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
Its a rural constituency with a 400k Tory majority. Whilst the audiences for these are self-selecting, that means a decent number should be pro-Tory. And they booed her. Jeered her. In very large numbers. Not just the opposition activists.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
True enough, but was she the one who was quoted as saying she didn't want to play party politics? As that was an amazingly dumb attempt to dodge comment about things.
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.
The whole idea of trying to pretend a monopoly supply like retail energy can become a market was always doomed to failure. Neoliberalism gone mad.
Fine to have a free market for generation but the retail market was always completely artificial, the poor subsided the better-off, and the switching model inevitably introduced inefficient overheads. We should have stuck with National or regional electricity and gas boards for retail energy supply.
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?"
"Ukraine and the UK are at different points in their own development, and each has their own needs and relationships. Whilst the UK believes it should seize the opportunities open to it afforded by being outside of the EU, it recognises that integration with our friends of the EU would be of great benefit to the people of Ukraine, who by dint of their sacrifice and passion have shown how much they also have to offer our former partners in the EU".
It's actually a very easy question to answer in a variety of different ways, even if one would disagree with the UKs brexit position.
Alternatively, Johnson could just use the 'other' Brexit column he penned in 2016.
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
He’s rightly getting ratio’d on Twitter. It is, at the very least, blunderingly tone deaf. He does not even say sorry
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
It could possibly affect the Wakefield by election.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
He’s rightly getting ratio’d on Twitter. It is, at the very least, blunderingly tone deaf. He does not even say sorry
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
It could possibly affect the Wakefield by election.
I doubt it, This incredible story - as big as Catholic sexual abuse, and oddly similar - doesn’t get traction yet because too many people for too many reasons don’t want to think about it. Too depressing, too big, too bleak, too challenging, too difficult for many to process. So people think about other stuff. I doubt it will sway 100 votes in Wakefield
One day it may finally surface as a totemic issue, with political salience matching its scale, but not yet, and maybe not ever
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
He’s rightly getting ratio’d on Twitter. It is, at the very least, blunderingly tone deaf. He does not even say sorry
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
It could possibly affect the Wakefield by election.
What, by reminding people that the outgoing Tory MP was a nonce?
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
True enough, but was she the one who was quoted as saying she didn't want to play party politics? As that was an amazingly dumb attempt to dodge comment about things.
She was.
I'm not sure hpw you can be a headteacher and a local business woman at the same time. When I taught I had to go cap in hand to my headteacher for permission to do paid marking!!!
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
Let me put it another way: they make the market less efficient.
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
He’s rightly getting ratio’d on Twitter. It is, at the very least, blunderingly tone deaf. He does not even say sorry
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
It could possibly affect the Wakefield by election.
I doubt it, This incredible story - as big as Catholic sexual abuse, and oddly similar - doesn’t get traction yet because too many people for too many reasons don’t want to think about it. Too depressing, too big, too bleak, too challenging, too difficult for many to process. So people think about other stuff. I doubt it will sway 100 votes in Wakefield
One day it may finally surface as a totemic issue, with political salience matching its scale, but not yet, and maybe not ever
Part of the problem is how bad the situation is and how many perpetrators there are.
Easier for people to think that there's a relatively small number of evil people, like Couzens or Huntley, weirdos who can be caught and imprisoned, or avoided, than to believe that a lot of perpetrators are otherwise normal people that you might know and invite into your home.
That's why do many victims are not believed when the perpetrator doesn't fit the weirdo template.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
They have given up trying to govern. Too difficult, particularly for someone as dopey and lazy as Boris, so we have all the nonsense policies from the last few months. Send them to the knacker's yard.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
Let me put it another way: they make the market less efficient.
Stamp duty and council tax need to be replaced with a wealth tax based on current property value..
I have not read the report, so cannot comment on its conclusions, but that statement makes it seem like the report identified nothing much to worry about ('not all victims received the support they deserve' is a very neutral way of putting it I suppose), and the focus on the most extreme political allegation (ie it was done under protection of senior politicians), when there's many potential steps on the path to that most extreme allegation is interesting.
He’s rightly getting ratio’d on Twitter. It is, at the very least, blunderingly tone deaf. He does not even say sorry
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
It could possibly affect the Wakefield by election.
I doubt it, This incredible story - as big as Catholic sexual abuse, and oddly similar - doesn’t get traction yet because too many people for too many reasons don’t want to think about it. Too depressing, too big, too bleak, too challenging, too difficult for many to process. So people think about other stuff. I doubt it will sway 100 votes in Wakefield
One day it may finally surface as a totemic issue, with political salience matching its scale, but not yet, and maybe not ever
Part of the problem is how bad the situation is and how many perpetrators there are.
Easier for people to think that there's a relatively small number of evil people, like Couzens or Huntley, weirdos who can be caught and imprisoned, or avoided, than to believe that a lot of perpetrators are otherwise normal people that you might know and invite into your home.
That's why do many victims are not believed when the perpetrator doesn't fit the weirdo template.
Quite so
Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion - disgracefully treated by her party for her bravery and honesty - has estimated there might be up to one MILLION victims of grooming gangs
How do you begin to compute that? To process it, mentally? Even if she is out by an order of magnitude then that’s 100,000 rape victims of grooming gangs. WTF. And what if she is right?
I’ll say it again, I imagine ardently Catholic countries (eg Ireland) must have gone through something like. this as the scale of Catholic sexual abuse slowly came to light. Initially there must have been wilful denial - surely not, no way - then slowly the enormity of it began to impact
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
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
A very sad tale.
At least arrests were made. Most rape and sexual assaults do not get that far, and are often then cases that don't proceed to trial.
Last year there were over 67 000 recorded rapes and fewer than 1600 prosecutions.
Israeli politics under FPTP would be just as fragmented because Israeli society is fragmented. Indeed, the problem would probably be worse under FPTP as the different segments of the population are often separated geographically.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
We did very much the same; down-sized when we both retired, and were able to travel and socialise.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
We did very much the same; down-sized when we both retired, and were able to travel and socialise.
Yes, a good move.
Mrs Foxy and I do occupy a 4 bed detached house with land. Fox jr2 occasionally comes to stay for a weekend, but clearly it is under occupied. We do like to spread out though, and aren't planning to move for another 10 years or so when we pick up our pensions aged 67. Where we go then is unclear, but depends where the boys are.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
I think I’d have to travel a fair way to find a 2-bed for a mere £120k!
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
Israeli politics under FPTP would be just as fragmented because Israeli society is fragmented. Indeed, the problem would probably be worse under FPTP as the different segments of the population are often separated geographically.
Difficult to believe it could be worse, but to be honest I am no expert.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
Our plan: Build our retirement bungalow in the back garden. Convert the house and bank (big u-shaped building) into two houses. Sell those. Retirement sorted.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Partly ()not wholly) regulation. All the new requirements that get put onto new houses (rightly so) inflate the price.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
We did very much the same; down-sized when we both retired, and were able to travel and socialise.
My view is that ability to get to local services and social stuff without a car is crucial as you get older.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Partly ()not wholly) regulation. All the new requirements that get put onto new houses (rightly so) inflate the price.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
15% of car sales last month were EVs, tipping point is imminent for them. In 5 years EVs will be cheaper than ICE vehicles and the latter will be unsellable new, at least non-commercial vehicles. Being wired for charging makes sense, and is a positive selling point.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I did indeed. well spotted.
The hanging thing starts with 'bring back hanging for police murderers' and spirals from there.
Sacking civil servants is another excellent one.
Slashing red tape, of course.
Bonfire of quangos used to be an old favourite but I am not sure there are any left.
Bring back forgotten regiment names of the British Army could be one that we haven't seen for a while.
I guess decimal coinage is due a bashing as well, since nothing has been right in this country since the loss of the sixpence.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I don't think even the Tories propose hanging either benefit fraudsters or Civil Servants, surely?
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I did indeed. well spotted.
The hanging thing starts with 'bring back hanging for police murderers' and spirals from there.
Sacking civil servants is another excellent one.
Slashing red tape, of course.
Bonfire of quangos used to be an old favourite but I am not sure there are any left.
Bring back forgotten regiment names of the British Army could be one that we haven't seen for a while.
I guess decimal coinage is due a bashing as well, since nothing has been right in this country since the loss of the sixpence.
I know you are mostly joking, but have any serious politicians ever proposed bringing back the death penalty in say the last 30 years? Priti Patel?
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I don't think even the Tories propose hanging either benefit fraudsters or Civil Servants, surely?
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
We did very much the same; down-sized when we both retired, and were able to travel and socialise.
My view is that ability to get to local services and social stuff without a car is crucial as you get older.
Yes, it is not just the possibility of no longer driving, but the simple act of shopping locally, socialising and worshiping locally that builds new social contacts. Driving everywhere in an anonymous bubble to the supermarket with a self scan system is no way to have a social life.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Partly ()not wholly) regulation. All the new requirements that get put onto new houses (rightly so) inflate the price.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
15% of car sales last month were EVs, tipping point is imminent for them. In 5 years EVs will be cheaper than ICE vehicles and the latter will be unsellable new, at least non-commercial vehicles. Being wired for charging makes sense, and is a positive selling point.
I'm not denying there are good reasons for the chargers (though I tin your timescales are a tad optimistic).
I'm saying that the provision of the chargers in new houses costs money, increasing the cost of a new house. Like insulation (*), its provision *may* make a house cheaper to run; but that does not help with the cost of the mortgage.
And there are many regulations that increase costs, most of them good. But they increase costs.
(*) If it is installed correctly. In many new houses, it is not.
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.”
You'd think lessons might have been learned by now, wouldn't you?
And yet a senior politician said this earlier this year -
"There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour.”
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Partly ()not wholly) regulation. All the new requirements that get put onto new houses (rightly so) inflate the price.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
I have a suspicion that regulation is not leading to houses being built better though. A lot of housing that is compliant with building regulations is very poor quality. I am dealing at the moment with a 5 storey block of flats built about 13 years ago which is having to be substantially rebuilt due to its timber frame design, rot is already setting in. Obviously there was also the phenomenon of supposedly high performance cladding being added to buildings which turned out to be highly flammable.
Not saying that I disagree with building regulations, but you really wonder if houses being built now will last in the way that those that were built in the 1970's will.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I did indeed. well spotted.
The hanging thing starts with 'bring back hanging for police murderers' and spirals from there.
Sacking civil servants is another excellent one.
Slashing red tape, of course.
Bonfire of quangos used to be an old favourite but I am not sure there are any left.
Bring back forgotten regiment names of the British Army could be one that we haven't seen for a while.
I guess decimal coinage is due a bashing as well, since nothing has been right in this country since the loss of the sixpence.
I know you are mostly joking, but have any serious politicians ever proposed bringing back the death penalty in say the last 30 years? Priti Patel?
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
True enough, but was she the one who was quoted as saying she didn't want to play party politics? As that was an amazingly dumb attempt to dodge comment about things.
She was.
I'm not sure hpw you can be a headteacher and a local business woman at the same time. When I taught I had to go cap in hand to my headteacher for permission to do paid marking!!!
She "is" not a head teacher - that is in the past. She is said to run a "beauty training business" whatever that is. Certainly she is far better groomed than Mr Johnson and even the rather neat Ayrshires (?) in the photo op.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I did indeed. well spotted.
The hanging thing starts with 'bring back hanging for police murderers' and spirals from there.
Sacking civil servants is another excellent one.
Slashing red tape, of course.
Bonfire of quangos used to be an old favourite but I am not sure there are any left.
Bring back forgotten regiment names of the British Army could be one that we haven't seen for a while.
I guess decimal coinage is due a bashing as well, since nothing has been right in this country since the loss of the sixpence.
I know you are mostly joking, but have any serious politicians ever proposed bringing back the death penalty in say the last 30 years? Priti Patel?
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
You said "she performed confidently" at the hustings. Her performance had the audience jeering and shouting shame.
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I’ve not seen the hustings, but surely both can be true? Are not hustings likely to be attended by politically aware folk, likely to boo and heckle opponents no matter how confidently they speak?
True enough, but was she the one who was quoted as saying she didn't want to play party politics? As that was an amazingly dumb attempt to dodge comment about things.
She was.
I'm not sure hpw you can be a headteacher and a local business woman at the same time. When I taught I had to go cap in hand to my headteacher for permission to do paid marking!!!
She "is" not a head teacher - that is in the past. She is said to run a "beauty training business" whatever that is. Certainly she is far better groomed than Mr Johnson and even the rather neat Ayrshires (?) in the photo op.
Israeli politics under FPTP would be just as fragmented because Israeli society is fragmented. Indeed, the problem would probably be worse under FPTP as the different segments of the population are often separated geographically.
Yes, the "problem" with the politics of Israel is that there are approximately two dozen very salient social identities.
I see we have reached the 'we'll look into bringing back grammar schools' part of the collapse of a Tory government.
I can't remember, does Fox hunting come before or after grammar schools? It feels like it should be after, appealing to the most reactionary of the base, but istr that May talked about fox hunting before bringing back grammars.
I think it depends on the by-election calendar.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Does the sackings of pen-pushing civil servants come before or after "Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants"?
You forgot Hanging.
I did indeed. well spotted.
The hanging thing starts with 'bring back hanging for police murderers' and spirals from there.
Sacking civil servants is another excellent one.
Slashing red tape, of course.
Bonfire of quangos used to be an old favourite but I am not sure there are any left.
Bring back forgotten regiment names of the British Army could be one that we haven't seen for a while.
I guess decimal coinage is due a bashing as well, since nothing has been right in this country since the loss of the sixpence.
I know you are mostly joking, but have any serious politicians ever proposed bringing back the death penalty in say the last 30 years? Priti Patel?
Rhodes Boyson?
1994 counts, just: as wiki says, 186 MPs wanted the death penalty brought back .
"A Parliamentary debate on a question proposing reintroduction of capital punishment came on 21 February 1994 when new clauses to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill were moved. The first, providing for death as the sentence for "the murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty", was rejected by 186 to 383;[95] A new clause providing for general reintroduction with power for the Court of Appeal to substitute life imprisonment was rejected by 159 to 403.[96] This would have been aimed at terrorists in the Northern Ireland conflict.[97]
In June 2013 a new bill for capital punishment in England and Wales was introduced, sponsored by Conservative MP Philip Hollobone. This Bill was withdrawn.[98]"
PS I have admittedly chickened out of checking the "serious politician" bit, certainly in re 1994.
Is there any polling on Secondary Moderns on the same lines? After all, that is where most children would go...
Ah, but Tories all assume they'll leave someone else with the shitty end of the educational stick.
PS And re Matrons, I expect they will see no harm in repeating it - like double counting "new hospitals" and defining minor extensions as "hospitals". The old jokes are the best.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
We did very much the same; down-sized when we both retired, and were able to travel and socialise.
Yes, a good move.
Mrs Foxy and I do occupy a 4 bed detached house with land. Fox jr2 occasionally comes to stay for a weekend, but clearly it is under occupied. We do like to spread out though, and aren't planning to move for another 10 years or so when we pick up our pensions aged 67. Where we go then is unclear, but depends where the boys are.
Have to be careful about relying on family. When we moved here Younger Son lived round the corner, and worked for a local firm. Five years later he’d moved to Thailand, working for someone else. Daughter, was settled with a family, 40 or so minutes drive away. 10 years later she developed MND and died a few months later. Elder son is at least an hour away, across the Thames. However we live in a supportive community.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Partly ()not wholly) regulation. All the new requirements that get put onto new houses (rightly so) inflate the price.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
15% of car sales last month were EVs, tipping point is imminent for them. In 5 years EVs will be cheaper than ICE vehicles and the latter will be unsellable new, at least non-commercial vehicles. Being wired for charging makes sense, and is a positive selling point.
I have a Tesla Model Y reservation. For a company car that I don't think I now want. But with used prices as mental as they are and supply even of Teslas starting to dry up I'm half tempted to borrow the money, buy it and then quickly sell it for profit.
Have we done all Test match attendees must wear a tie?
Dress code was relaxed at Ascot last Friday in the Royal Enclosure - once the royal procession had completed, gentlemen were allowed to remove their top hats and morning coats.
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.
Not just trading down. I could have 5 v nice summer holidays for the amount of stamp duty I would pay for moving to a bigger house.
The key to successfully downsizing is not to leave it too late. My folks moved from their big family house to a 3 bed 15 years ago aged 72ish, walking distance to the shops, and plenty of time to form new social networks. A low maintenance garden meant they could get away and travel for months at a time. My uncle didn't, and is now stuck in a big detached house, no bus route and unable to drive due to worsening vision. That is how social isolation happens.
We did very much the same; down-sized when we both retired, and were able to travel and socialise.
Yes, a good move.
Mrs Foxy and I do occupy a 4 bed detached house with land. Fox jr2 occasionally comes to stay for a weekend, but clearly it is under occupied. We do like to spread out though, and aren't planning to move for another 10 years or so when we pick up our pensions aged 67. Where we go then is unclear, but depends where the boys are.
Have to be careful about relying on family. When we moved here Younger Son lived round the corner, and worked for a local firm. Five years later he’d moved to Thailand, working for someone else. Daughter, was settled with a family, 40 or so minutes drive away. 10 years later she developed MND and died a few months later. Elder son is at least an hour away, across the Thames. However we live in a supportive community.
Sorry to hear about your daughter. Terrible disease.
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.
Not from you, in the press generally. There's a story a month in the torygraph saying ok another new record for house prices but The Crash Is Coming Be Extremely Afraid
On account of the fact that the readership of the right-wing dead tree press has an average age of about 75 and obsessing/panicking over the value of their main asset must be a favourite topic for that demographic.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
It is worth noting that almost exactly the same arguments were used about Hong Kong real estate:
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China - extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments - artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
You just need to look at build costs. For the most part houses in the UK don't sell for much more than they would cost to build based on current build costs. If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money. I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing. I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Partly ()not wholly) regulation. All the new requirements that get put onto new houses (rightly so) inflate the price.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
15% of car sales last month were EVs, tipping point is imminent for them. In 5 years EVs will be cheaper than ICE vehicles and the latter will be unsellable new, at least non-commercial vehicles. Being wired for charging makes sense, and is a positive selling point.
I have a Tesla Model Y reservation. For a company car that I don't think I now want. But with used prices as mental as they are and supply even of Teslas starting to dry up I'm half tempted to borrow the money, buy it and then quickly sell it for profit.
Depreciation is zero on EVs at the moment. My 2 year old eniro with 17000 miles is the same price I paid new.
Is there any polling on Secondary Moderns on the same lines? After all, that is where most children would go...
Ah, but Tories all assume they'll leave someone else with the shitty end of the educational stick.
PS And re Matrons, I expect they will see no harm in repeating it - like double counting "new hospitals" and defining minor extensions as "hospitals". The old jokes are the best.
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 13h The reason grammar schools were gradually phased out from the early 60s onwards is that voters hated them. If you want to explain to 85% of your constituents why their kids are going to rubbish schools, go ahead, be my guest. You'll get nowhere.
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
The trouble is, young HY, that she does not go into details in her publicity. She does not say just how long she was a headmistress - I have the impression that it was just a couple of years, having been headhunted by an Academy Chain Business to sort out some problems (which probably means being brutally tough with members of staff far more experienced than herself) just long enough to tick a few boxes - but this was nowhere near actually leading a school staff and coaxing the best out of people.
And then a "businesswoman".... Is she not actually a shopkeeper? A business of a kind I suppose... But you do make her sound like a director of a FSTE company. But then again, one of the candidates to become leader of the Conservative Party also did something like this, if I remember correctly, so I suppose it is par for the Conservative course.
What she says about herself reads like a shabby CV that has been spun out of recognition bby a third-class applicant for a job.
And as for her being "miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire", well she would have to be, wouldn't she? I felt very sorry for him, as I do for the poor Conservative candidate you have put up in Wakefield. You Conservatives are not very kind towards your candidates, are you? Or respectful towards the electorate.
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
The trouble is, young HY, that she does not go into details in her publicity. She does not say just how long she was a headmistress - I have the impression that it was just a couple of years, having been headhunted by an Academy Chain Business to sort out some problems (which probably means being brutally tough with members of staff far more experienced than herself) just long enough to tick a few boxes - but this was nowhere near actually leading a school staff and coaxing the best out of people.
And then a "businesswoman".... Is she not actually a shopkeeper? A business of a kind I suppose... But you do make her sound like a director of a FSTE company. But then again, one of the candidates to become leader of the Conservative Party also did something like this, if I remember correctly, so I suppose it is par for the Conservative course.
What she says about herself reads like a shabby CV that has been spun out of recognition bby a third-class applicant for a job.
And as for her being "miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire", well she would have to be, wouldn't she? I felt very sorry for him, as I do for the poor Conservative candidate you have put up in Wakefield. You Conservatives are not very kind towards your candidates, are you? Or respectful towards the electorate.
A director of a FTSE company based in London would be less of an asset in a by election for a seat in Devon than a local small businesswoman based in Devon as well as local former headteacher
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
The trouble is, young HY, that she does not go into details in her publicity. She does not say just how long she was a headmistress - I have the impression that it was just a couple of years, having been headhunted by an Academy Chain Business to sort out some problems (which probably means being brutally tough with members of staff far more experienced than herself) just long enough to tick a few boxes - but this was nowhere near actually leading a school staff and coaxing the best out of people.
And then a "businesswoman".... Is she not actually a shopkeeper? A business of a kind I suppose... But you do make her sound like a director of a FSTE company. But then again, one of the candidates to become leader of the Conservative Party also did something like this, if I remember correctly, so I suppose it is par for the Conservative course.
What she says about herself reads like a shabby CV that has been spun out of recognition bby a third-class applicant for a job.
And as for her being "miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire", well she would have to be, wouldn't she? I felt very sorry for him, as I do for the poor Conservative candidate you have put up in Wakefield. You Conservatives are not very kind towards your candidates, are you? Or respectful towards the electorate.
A director of a FTSE company based in London would be less of an asset in a by election for a seat in Devon than a local small businesswoman based in Devon as well as local former headteacher
I suggest you watch the video of her performance at the recent hustings, then come back and tell us that she is a strong candidate.
Is there any polling on Secondary Moderns on the same lines? After all, that is where most children would go...
Ah, but Tories all assume they'll leave someone else with the shitty end of the educational stick.
PS And re Matrons, I expect they will see no harm in repeating it - like double counting "new hospitals" and defining minor extensions as "hospitals". The old jokes are the best.
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 13h The reason grammar schools were gradually phased out from the early 60s onwards is that voters hated them. If you want to explain to 85% of your constituents why their kids are going to rubbish schools, go ahead, be my guest. You'll get nowhere.
Except as I already pointed out 38% want more grammars created, only 23% want to scrap existing grammars and 17% want to keep current grammars but create no more. Even 33% of former secondary modern pupils want more grammars.
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
The trouble is, young HY, that she does not go into details in her publicity. She does not say just how long she was a headmistress - I have the impression that it was just a couple of years, having been headhunted by an Academy Chain Business to sort out some problems (which probably means being brutally tough with members of staff far more experienced than herself) just long enough to tick a few boxes - but this was nowhere near actually leading a school staff and coaxing the best out of people.
And then a "businesswoman".... Is she not actually a shopkeeper? A business of a kind I suppose... But you do make her sound like a director of a FSTE company. But then again, one of the candidates to become leader of the Conservative Party also did something like this, if I remember correctly, so I suppose it is par for the Conservative course.
What she says about herself reads like a shabby CV that has been spun out of recognition bby a third-class applicant for a job.
And as for her being "miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire", well she would have to be, wouldn't she? I felt very sorry for him, as I do for the poor Conservative candidate you have put up in Wakefield. You Conservatives are not very kind towards your candidates, are you? Or respectful towards the electorate.
A director of a FTSE company based in London would be less of an asset in a by election for a seat in Devon than a local small businesswoman based in Devon as well as local former headteacher
I suggest you watch the video of her performance at the recent hustings, then come back and tell us that she is a strong candidate.
I saw the hustings and the Tory was awful. Incredibly condescending. Like a Karen
I married a real life Karen. She was the least Karen-type Karen who ever complained about anything. More likely to be a fighting against the Myanmar government-tyoe Karen in fact.
Comments
That said: around 457 first-round leaders won, and around 115 second-place finishers won.
Ensemble beat 45 Nupes candidates who led in the first round and lost 7 first-places to Nupes.
The same stats for Ensemble and RN were 16-3. For Nupes and RN, it was 8-3.
LR-UDI held ALL of their first-round leads and took a bunch of seats from second place: 9 from RN, 8 from Nupes and 5 from Ensemble.
In general, there was a pattern of shall we say "efficient voting" in the first round between Ensemble and LR. Where LR was strong, people didn't both voting Ensemble very hard.
I really don't think that an occasional visit to Kyiv by Boris Johnson is a significant factor in the calculus.
It's actually a very easy question to answer in a variety of different ways, even if one would disagree with the UKs brexit position.
He was the LEADER when much of this happened. Mind boggling
https://twitter.com/jimfromoldham/status/1538819456423583745?s=21&t=LanVd0F0KayeDy914DwTeg
Your version of events and the actual events are different.
I think most of us would concur that little short of an apocalypse is likely to cause a major downward correction in house prices in the UK. Hiking interest rates to 2% or 3% certainly won't. There's a fundamental issue of lack of supply, exacerbated by the fact that endless population growth renders our feeble attempts to build enough new homes to ease that problem largely redundant, and that residential properties are a more-or-less risk-free investment that offer large, guaranteed returns.
At worst, it is a self serving piece of duplicity from a vile man who knows he failed
Fine to have a free market for generation but the retail market was always completely artificial, the poor subsided the better-off, and the switching model inevitably introduced inefficient overheads. We should have stuck with National or regional electricity and gas boards for retail energy supply.
Labour should promise to bring them back.
- ever rising population as more and more people come from China
- extremely limited supply of new housing as Government doesn't sell off new land or approve new developments
- artificially low interest rates because of need to avoid the peg with USD being broken
Those arguments meant people bid up property to ridiculous rates. They thought it was risk free.
One day it may finally surface as a totemic issue, with political salience matching its scale, but not yet, and maybe not ever
At least it lasted a year this time.
Israeli General Elections
April 2019
September 2019
March 2020
March 2021
Easier for people to think that there's a relatively small number of evil people, like Couzens or Huntley, weirdos who can be caught and imprisoned, or avoided, than to believe that a lot of perpetrators are otherwise normal people that you might know and invite into your home.
That's why do many victims are not believed when the perpetrator doesn't fit the weirdo template.
Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion - disgracefully treated by her party for her bravery and honesty - has estimated there might be up to one MILLION victims of grooming gangs
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/child-sex-abuse-gangs-could-5114029
How do you begin to compute that? To process it, mentally? Even if she is out by an order of magnitude then that’s 100,000 rape victims of grooming gangs. WTF. And what if she is right?
I’ll say it again, I imagine ardently Catholic countries (eg Ireland) must have gone through something like. this as the scale of Catholic sexual abuse slowly came to light. Initially there must have been wilful denial - surely not, no way - then slowly the enormity of it began to impact
At least arrests were made. Most rape and sexual assaults do not get that far, and are often then cases that don't proceed to trial.
Last year there were over 67 000 recorded rapes and fewer than 1600 prosecutions.
If you see a modern 2 bed flat for sale for £120k, the reality is that it couldn't be built for that money.
I think house prices can deflate significantly and will at some point, but it is likely to be variable between geographic locations, and there is a high floor based on demand and the cost of building replacement housing.
I don't buy in to the narrative of a crash.
An interesting question though - is why are build costs so excessive? Why does this inflate at such a crazy rate?
Mrs Foxy and I do occupy a 4 bed detached house with land. Fox jr2 occasionally comes to stay for a weekend, but clearly it is under occupied. We do like to spread out though, and aren't planning to move for another 10 years or so when we pick up our pensions aged 67. Where we go then is unclear, but depends where the boys are.
The standard 'collapse of tory administration dead cats' are listed in order on wikipedia as follows:
Do something about immigration that winds up leading church of england clerics
Return of Imperial units
Return of Grammar schools
Crackdown on benefit fraud with new whizzo fraud unit of 1000s of civil servants.
Fox hunting
Return of corporal punishment in schools
Return of national service
All schools to have a singing of national anthem to start the day
...and if things are looking really dicey:
Increase pensioner benefits.
Build our retirement bungalow in the back garden.
Convert the house and bank (big u-shaped building) into two houses.
Sell those. Retirement sorted.
Going around the new development around here, many of the houses have chargers outside them (I assume the others do as well, just more hidden out of sight).
That would be a small but non-trivial cost. The same with all the other requirements as well.
I'm not saying the new regulations are wrong; just that they cost money.
The hanging thing starts with 'bring back hanging for police murderers' and spirals from there.
Sacking civil servants is another excellent one.
Slashing red tape, of course.
Bonfire of quangos used to be an old favourite but I am not sure there are any left.
Bring back forgotten regiment names of the British Army could be one that we haven't seen for a while.
I guess decimal coinage is due a bashing as well, since nothing has been right in this country since the loss of the sixpence.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/08/15/two-thirds-people-would-send-their-child-grammar-s
I'm saying that the provision of the chargers in new houses costs money, increasing the cost of a new house. Like insulation (*), its provision *may* make a house cheaper to run; but that does not help with the cost of the mortgage.
And there are many regulations that increase costs, most of them good. But they increase costs.
(*) If it is installed correctly. In many new houses, it is not.
Bring back Matron on every ward.
And yet a senior politician said this earlier this year -
"There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour.”
One of the most extraordinarily ignorant statements given the vast amount of evidence of predatory / abusive men doing just that - as set out in multiple IICSA reports: https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation.
Not saying that I disagree with building regulations, but you really wonder if houses being built now will last in the way that those that were built in the 1970's will.
https://www.helen-hurford.org.uk/about-helen-hurford
She "is" not a head teacher - that is in the past. She is said to run a "beauty training business" whatever that is. Certainly she is far better groomed than Mr Johnson and even the rather neat Ayrshires (?) in the photo op.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/17/helen-hurford-tiverton-honiton-candidate-declines-to-say-if-boris-johnson-trustworthy
https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/local-council/romford-mp-we-need-a-debate-over-death-penalty-for-2911760
"I can't as a minister be any help" in the rail discussions is going to help him avoid the reshuffle blues.
"A Parliamentary debate on a question proposing reintroduction of capital punishment came on 21 February 1994 when new clauses to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill were moved. The first, providing for death as the sentence for "the murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty", was rejected by 186 to 383;[95] A new clause providing for general reintroduction with power for the Court of Appeal to substitute life imprisonment was rejected by 159 to 403.[96] This would have been aimed at terrorists in the Northern Ireland conflict.[97]
In June 2013 a new bill for capital punishment in England and Wales was introduced, sponsored by Conservative MP Philip Hollobone. This Bill was withdrawn.[98]"
PS I have admittedly chickened out of checking the "serious politician" bit, certainly in re 1994.
PS And re Matrons, I expect they will see no harm in repeating it - like double counting "new hospitals" and defining minor extensions as "hospitals". The old jokes are the best.
Daughter, was settled with a family, 40 or so minutes drive away. 10 years later she developed MND and died a few months later.
Elder son is at least an hour away, across the Thames.
However we live in a supportive community.
@gsoh31
·
13h
The reason grammar schools were gradually phased out from the early 60s onwards is that voters hated them. If you want to explain to 85% of your constituents why their kids are going to rubbish schools, go ahead, be my guest. You'll get nowhere.
And then a "businesswoman".... Is she not actually a shopkeeper? A business of a kind I suppose... But you do make her sound like a director of a FSTE company. But then again, one of the candidates to become leader of the Conservative Party also did something like this, if I remember correctly, so I suppose it is par for the Conservative course.
What she says about herself reads like a shabby CV that has been spun out of recognition bby a third-class applicant for a job.
And as for her being "miles better than the non local Tory candidate in North Shropshire", well she would have to be, wouldn't she? I felt very sorry for him, as I do for the poor Conservative candidate you have put up in Wakefield. You Conservatives are not very kind towards your candidates, are you? Or respectful towards the electorate.
The economy. The character of the PM.
All else is squirrel. Best ignored.
That is because grammar schools are the main schools in the state sector that consistently challenge private schools on exam results and entrance into Oxbridge and other top universities, comprehensives rarely do, the only exception a few high performing free schools and academies
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/08/15/two-thirds-people-would-send-their-child-grammar-s
More likely to be a fighting against the Myanmar government-tyoe Karen in fact.