I think the scenario is much more 1990 than 1995, but the question is whether the election-winning PM will be replaced this time or if the Tories will have a stab at seeing what would have happened at a 1992 GE with Thatcher v Kinnock.
What's the feeling on that counterfactual? Would Thatcher still have managed to claw things back? Were the British public always going to hesitate to make Kinnock PM? Or was a Tory defeat in 1992 inevitable if they'd kept Thatcher as leader?
Hung Parliament I would have guessed. Folk had had their fill of Maggie. Not enough to make Kinnock PM. We may well have ended up with Major anyways.
There was much smaller landing zone for NOC then compared with now and 50 SNP seats.
The 1990s was a period of economic growth, the beginning of a “catch-up” period for the British economy which saw services (but not manufacturing) reach US levels of productivity, GDP per capita surpass European peers, and London taking its place as a global capital (maybe *the* global capital).
The situation is quite different in 2022. British productivity has been stagnant since 2008, and there’s been very little growth in the economy. Productivity is a global issue, but the situation in the UK is the very worst. In turn that means less tax take, and less money for public services.
Economists continue to debate why but the reasons in no particular order are thought to be:
- Decline of oil output - Decline after GFC of financial industry - Lack of R&D investment by govt - Massive regional imbalance (ie SE v rest) - Austerity policy - Endemic skill problems in workforce - Economic effects of Brexit - Housing policy
I would add the constitutional narcissism of Sindy and Brexit alike which greedily consume the overall political narrative
Until someone - anyone - in the UK chooses to get real and confront above then Britain will continue to decline and possibly break apart.
The “good” news is that Britain now starts from quite behind the pack, so there actually is room to catch up.
But Shirley, the Brexit dividend, the Brexit dividend........? Oh!
I think the scenario is much more 1990 than 1995, but the question is whether the election-winning PM will be replaced this time or if the Tories will have a stab at seeing what would have happened at a 1992 GE with Thatcher v Kinnock.
What's the feeling on that counterfactual? Would Thatcher still have managed to claw things back? Were the British public always going to hesitate to make Kinnock PM? Or was a Tory defeat in 1992 inevitable if they'd kept Thatcher as leader?
Most likely had Thatcher led the Tories in 1992 it would have been a hung parliament with Kinnock Labour most seats
That might have led to PR.
In which case Heseltine would probably have succeeded her as Leader of the Opposition
Without a doubt. Then a very tight election in 97. Kinnock probably holding on but an outright majority unlikely under the new PR system. Pressure to hand over to Smith (who wouldn't have died if electoral reform had happened) builds up quite soon thereafter.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
After 2008, some anonymous Belgian(?) said that everyone knows what is needed, nobody knows how to get re-elected after doing that.
Consumption has got ahead of sustainable production, we need to feel poorer for a bit, simple as. But we're not ready for that message.
As for the header question-
Leafy places are vulnerable to the Libs. Gritty, studenty places are vulnerable to Lab.
That leaves Brexity small towns. Kent, Essex, chunks of the Midlands and North East. Tamworth would be OK for the blue team. So would Romford.
If Farage can reinflate his balloon, those places would be vulnerable, and a Canadian wipeout would be possible. So part of the trap the Conservatives are in is that protecting what's left to them makes them less attractive to the rest of the country.
Brexity small towns ain't enough.
That is the current Conservative core, however if Labour win the next general election and become unpopular the Conservative core would expand to the leafy Home counties and suburbs again by default as the main opposition
That may be true, because that tends to happen but you can't be sure. The Liberals were once one of the 2 main parties and Labour didn't exist. France had changed dramatically. It is not impossible that a party commits suicide. I grant you it is unlikely, but it can happen.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Fair comment but just how is any government going to address it and get elected
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
It's perpetually putting the problem off until tomorrow, only to make the final denouement worse.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
100% agree mate, Labour aren't that party and the Tories definitely aren't.
Only a couple of the spectators thought to try to get out of the way (of a huge lump of metal hurtling towards them); most edged forward with their phones held up to get a better shot.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Only a couple of the spectators thought to try to get out of the way (of a huge lump of metal hurtling towards them); most edged forward with their phones held up to get a better shot.
To be honest, you ain't getting out the way of it when you're seated in a stand like that.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Alphonso Van Marsh @AlphonsoVM · 13h #Boston mayor condemns 'white supremacist' march through city. The group of about 100 marchers, most hiding their faces, identified themselves via flyers as belonging to the white nationalist group the Patriot Front.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
How many second homes are owned in the average Midlands and Northern seats? Very few outside the Lake District and Peak District.
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% to 15% not 30% as you wrongly stated so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in the North East in 2019, helped by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
How many second homes are owned in the average Midlands and Northern seats, very few outside the Lake District and Peak District.
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% not 30% so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in North East in 2019, held by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
You really do not have a clue how much a struggle it is to get on the housing ladder anywhere
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
How many second homes are owned in the average Midlands and Northern seats, very few outside the Lake District and Peak District.
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% not 30% so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in North East in 2019, held by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
You really do not have a clue how much a struggle it is to get on the housing ladder anywhere
Rubbish, outside of London and the Home counties the vast majority are on the property ladder by 40, in the North East significantly earlier than that.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as a especially property owning democracy is actually not really true anymore.
Yes it's not ownership that is the problem. The problem is an inadequate supply, NIMBYism, and the result that we pay way too much for basically rubbish housing.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as a especially property owning democracy is actually not really true anymore.
Going back to your original argument, Gordon Brown stoking a huge housing bubble through cheap borrowing and mass immigration must be the biggest factor in undoing the 'golden legacy' that New Labour took over.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Fair comment but just how is any government going to address it and get elected
That is the problem. We are where we are because pensioners vote, and because people who aren't pensioners are wedded to the idea of inheriting their wealth (cf the dementia tax).
However, there are a few things that could be done right now, such as bringing interest rates up (BoE independence aside), stricter mortgage lending criteria, increasing taxes on second homes, punitive taxation of undeveloped land being held in land banks, easing of planning restrictions, more medium density (5 storey) properties, maybe even a state funded construction company building thousands of houses at cost to compete with the developer oligopoly. Oh, and ending leasehold so flats are attractive purchases again - at the moment they're not.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as a especially property owning democracy is actually not really true anymore.
Yes it's no ownership that is the problem. The problem is an inadequate supply, NIMBYism, and the result that we pay way too much for basically rubbish housing.
Crap planning policy has led to poor quality and insufficient supply.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
How many second homes are owned in the average Midlands and Northern seats, very few outside the Lake District and Peak District.
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% not 30% so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in North East in 2019, held by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
You really do not have a clue how much a struggle it is to get on the housing ladder anywhere
Rubbish, outside of London and the Home counties the vast majority are on the property ladder by 40, in the North East significantly earlier than that.
I think there may be an issue about the quality of the housing though. A lot of the stock in the Northeast in particular is fairly old. And some of those houses may be a lot cheaper. Extended family members are buying former industrial housing much more cheaply than other family members can in Essex. A lot of work needs to be done on those houses, though.
Shame for Russell. Basically penalised for doing the right thing
Nah, his car was toast. And he may well blamed for the accident. He basically closed out the car on his left hand side leaving him nowhere to go, got tabbed and hit Zhou.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
Jings and crivvens, help ma boab! The EU average so much higher than Brexitland, too.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
How many second homes are owned in the average Midlands and Northern seats? Very few outside the Lake District and Peak District.
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% to 15% not 30% as you wrongly stated so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in the North East in 2019, helped by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
If you actually read what I write, I was taking household income into account, for mortgages.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as a especially property owning democracy is actually not really true anymore.
Going back to your original argument, Gordon Brown stoking a huge housing bubble through cheap borrowing and mass immigration must be the biggest factor in undoing the 'golden legacy' that New Labour took over.
I don’t think Gordon Brown has much to do with it, and immigration has had less impact on household formation and demand than other factors.
The issue has been crap planning policy leading to insufficient housebuilding, and low interest rates creating inflated house prices, speculation, and the rise of buy-to-let.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
Only 58% in Scotland. So it's not just London that's a problem.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
Jings and crivvens, help ma boab! The EU average so much higher than Brexitland, too.
London voted against Brexit, London has the lowest home ownership rate in the UK. 69% own their own homes in the East Midlands, same as the EU average and the East Midlands voted for Brexit
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Fair comment but just how is any government going to address it and get elected
That is the problem. We are where we are because pensioners vote, and because people who aren't pensioners are wedded to the idea of inheriting their wealth (cf the dementia tax).
However, there are a few things that could be done right now, such as bringing interest rates up (BoE independence aside), stricter mortgage lending criteria, increasing taxes on second homes, punitive taxation of undeveloped land being held in land banks, easing of planning restrictions, more medium density (5 storey) properties, maybe even a state funded construction company building thousands of houses at cost to compete with the developer oligopoly. Oh, and ending leasehold so flats are attractive purchases again - at the moment they're not.
Increased taxes on second homes and punitive taxation of undeveloped land is absolutely necessary, as is easing planning restrictions but I do not see a place for a state funded construction company
As far as leasehold on flats is concerned they should all be sold on a 999 year lease and a peppercorn ground rent
Unfortunately we have a policy vacuum from all the main parties and not just on housing but across all aspects of government and while the conservatives are in total disarray, a labour government facing the same problems would be struggling within months of gaining office
I have no doubt the next election is a good one to lose
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
Jings and crivvens, help ma boab! The EU average so much higher than Brexitland, too.
London voted against Brexit, London has the lowest home ownership rate in the UK. 69% own their own homes in the East Midlands, same as the EU average and the East Midlands voted for Brexit
So, the UK average is a great deal lower than the EU.
Unless you think London and Scotland are still in the EU?
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
4. (see your 2.) any vaguely profitable British company gets sold off abroad.
5. (likewise) even utilities are foreign-owned so Rishi writes subsidy cheques to foreign governments.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
And? Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
Paris is a significantly smaller percentage of France than London is of the UK. NYC and LA-San Francisco combined are also a smaller percentage of the USA than London is of the UK.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
I don't really believe in the hard way any more.
The solution to an ageing population is to age healthier, work well for longer, and require less care during our elder years. I think that's do-able with small changes to food production and preparation of dietary staples, and better dietary and health advice. This would also lighten the load on hospitals.
It's likely that there's an easy way through everything else too.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
Only 58% in Scotland. So it's not just London that's a problem.
Well blame Sturgeon for Scotland having the 2nd lowest home ownership rate in the UK after Sadiq Khan's London
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
And? Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
Paris is a significantly smaller percentage of France than London is of the UK. NYC and LA-San Francisco combined are also a smaller percentage of the USA than London is of the UK.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
You really have no idea.
You look at everything through the prism of what is good for the Tory Party, in fact you are part of the problem.
You and your ilk have cheerled the country into decline.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Fair comment but just how is any government going to address it and get elected
It would help if they would be honest with the public about the situation. Broadly speaking that's what Cameron and Osborne did, and they went from relying on a Coalition with the Lib Dems, to winning a majority on their own at the subsequent general election, even after five years of austerity.
The British public can be convinced of the necessity to munch shit, but it requires honesty, an air of competence, a sense of fairness, and an absence of hypocrisy.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as a especially property owning democracy is actually not really true anymore.
Going back to your original argument, Gordon Brown stoking a huge housing bubble through cheap borrowing and mass immigration must be the biggest factor in undoing the 'golden legacy' that New Labour took over.
I don’t think Gordon Brown has much to do with it, and immigration has had less impact on household formation and demand than other factors.
The issue has been crap planning policy leading to insufficient housebuilding, and low interest rates creating inflated house prices, speculation, and the rise of buy-to-let.
Call me naive, but I am fairly sure that allowing 5m migrants into the country - the greatest immigration in UK history - probably has impinged, just a tad, on the shortage of decent housing
If you let 15 people live in your house, you risk running out of bedrooms
Vast countries like the USA, Canada or Australia can allow great waves of immigration. They can build entire new towns one after the other without wrecking the landscape
We cannot. So the irresistible force of mass immigration meets the immovable object of English resistance to endless development, et voila
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
Only 58% in Scotland. So it's not just London that's a problem.
Well blame Sturgeon for Scotland having the 2nd lowest home ownership rate in the UK after Sadiq Khan's London
Indeed. Credit the SNP with reversing the big sell off of public property for huge discounts. And with building council houses again. To the degree that Labour councils are doing it too.
Round here, the new ones're smallish, but rather good on external inspection, with separate back yards and parking areas.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as a especially property owning democracy is actually not really true anymore.
Going back to your original argument, Gordon Brown stoking a huge housing bubble through cheap borrowing and mass immigration must be the biggest factor in undoing the 'golden legacy' that New Labour took over.
I don’t think Gordon Brown has much to do with it, and immigration has had less impact on household formation and demand than other factors.
The issue has been crap planning policy leading to insufficient housebuilding, and low interest rates creating inflated house prices, speculation, and the rise of buy-to-let.
Call me naive, but I am fairly sure that allowing 5m migrants into the country - the greatest immigration in UK history - probably has impinged, just a tad, on the shortage of decent housing
If you let 15 people live in your house, you risk running out of bedrooms
Vast countries like the USA, Canada or Australia can allow great waves of immigration. They can build entire new towns one after the other without wrecking the landscape
We cannot. So the irresistible force of mass immigration meets the immovable object of English resistance to endless development, et voila
I’m sure it’s been a factor but on the other hand it’s helped the demographic problem referred to upthread.
But, it’s not the main issue for demand. You can look up the stats on gross household formation and the factors behind it.
Unfortunately I am “out and about” and don’t have the dexterity to open multiple tabs.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
And? Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
Paris is a significantly smaller percentage of France than London is of the UK. NYC and LA-San Francisco combined are also a smaller percentage of the USA than London is of the UK.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
You really have no idea.
You look at everything through the prism of what is good for the Tory Party, in fact you are part of the problem.
You and your ilk have cheerled the country into decline.
The problem is who is going to lead us out of the present mess
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
And? Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
Paris is a significantly smaller percentage of France than London is of the UK. NYC and LA-San Francisco combined are also a smaller percentage of the USA than London is of the UK.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
You really have no idea.
You look at everything through the prism of what is good for the Tory Party, in fact you are part of the problem.
You and your ilk have cheerled the country into decline.
The problem is who is going to lead us out of the present mess
I don’t know.
The absence of clear thinking - not just in the political class, but also in the media - is a depressing component of the problem.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
I don't really believe in the hard way any more.
The solution to an ageing population is to age healthier, work well for longer, and require less care during our elder years. I think that's do-able with small changes to food production and preparation of dietary staples, and better dietary and health advice. This would also lighten the load on hospitals.
It's likely that there's an easy way through everything else too.
I am also reminded of Adam Smith's famous dictum:
'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.'
At present, we don't really have peace - at least we're spending billions prosecuting a war (thank goodness we're not shedding British blood, just treasure), we don't have easy taxes by any stretch of the imagination, and whether we have tolerable administration of justice is highly debatable.
A lot of complex solutions can mooted, but we should try the simpler ones first imo.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are [edit] partly funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
How many second homes are owned in the average Midlands and Northern seats, very few outside the Lake District and Peak District.
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% not 30% so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in North East in 2019, held by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
You really do not have a clue how much a struggle it is to get on the housing ladder anywhere
Rubbish, outside of London and the Home counties the vast majority are on the property ladder by 40, in the North East significantly earlier than that.
I think there may be an issue about the quality of the housing though. A lot of the stock in the Northeast in particular is fairly old. And some of those houses may be a lot cheaper. Extended family members are buying former industrial housing much more cheaply than other family members can in Essex. A lot of work needs to be done on those houses, though.
There was an interesting point made by one of us the other day on a previous iteration of this regular argument - that having a house of your own significantly cut mobility, including economic mobility. AIUI one of th eproblems of the sell off of council houses was that many of them were crap and/or in declining areas - where nobody would want to live or could get jobs - so a lot of people were trapped. Also, house price inflation was much lower than in areas where employment was better. So it's quite conceivable that crowing about high rates of ownership in Yorkshire actually ignores the fact that it is, in part, a *problem* not something to proud of.
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
And? Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
Paris is a significantly smaller percentage of France than London is of the UK. NYC and LA-San Francisco combined are also a smaller percentage of the USA than London is of the UK.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
You really have no idea.
You look at everything through the prism of what is good for the Tory Party, in fact you are part of the problem.
You and your ilk have cheerled the country into decline.
The problem is who is going to lead us out of the present mess
I don’t know.
The absence of clear thinking - not just in the political class, but also in the media - is a depressing component of the problem.
It seems events are overwhelming a political class unsuited to the crisis, and not just here in the UK but in many others countries
I fear a lot of pain is heading the way of all politicians and unfortunately the public will be the ones paying the price, quite literally
At the moment if Tory MPs do decide to remove Johnson as Tory MPs failed to remove Major in 1995, then today's ConHome survey has Wallace and then Mordaunt preferred to succeed him
I think the ConHome survey is right. It is my gut feeling, although you never know who might come out of leftfield.
I think the scenario is different to 1995. Major wasn't the problem, it was the party. Currently Johnson is the problem (although the party isn't helping).
Indeed. Although the comments of myself and DavidL still stand. Replace the PM and you get rid of the most egregious excesses. But. What precisely will the new person do exactly about anything? No one has outlined any alternative policies. Including the Opposition. So all the basic problems remain.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning for tax cuts.
The UK has three great interrelated challenges:
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
The UK is a gerontocracy built on "wealth" created through ever increasing house prices, to the detriment of working age people who can no longer afford to have kids. I will vote for whichever government of whichever stripe has the guts to tackle this head on. Continuing to inflate the ponzi with 50 year mortgages, subprime mortgages to people on benefits, etc, ain't it.
Outside London and the Home counties where house prices are much cheaper and cost of living much lower that is not really the case
Second homes are funded by London prices. Hence one reason for inflation of the housing market UK wide.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
Exactly and @HYUFD is not recognising the issue which is a nationwide problem
Quite. It is a very crude calculation, but even a crude one can be very useful. And I should have said 'second homes and retirement homes', come to think of it.
Another way of looking at this is that the model we have in our heads of the UK as an especially property owning democracy is actually not so true anymore.
In London however only 50% own their own homes, by far the lowest UK figure.
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
And? Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
Paris is a significantly smaller percentage of France than London is of the UK. NYC and LA-San Francisco combined are also a smaller percentage of the USA than London is of the UK.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
You really have no idea.
You look at everything through the prism of what is good for the Tory Party, in fact you are part of the problem.
You and your ilk have cheerled the country into decline.
The problem is who is going to lead us out of the present mess
I don’t know.
The absence of clear thinking - not just in the political class, but also in the media - is a depressing component of the problem.
It seems events are overwhelming a political class unsuited to the crisis, and not just here in the UK but in many others countries
I fear a lot of pain is heading the way of all politicians and unfortunately the public will be the ones paying the price, quite literally
It is tempting to throw up one’s hands but to me it starts by unclogging the u-bend in Downing Street.
Comments
The experience of the 1970s is that rising inflation and a sluggish economy leads to frequent changes of government
1. We have a graying population, an inverted population pyramid, and health care and pension costs are likely to persistently rise faster than GDP.
2. We have been too dependent on borrowing from abroad to buy for goods from abroad. This means we've gone from a position where the world owed the UK money, to one where the UK owes the world money.
3. Most Brits' savings are tied up in their homes. Regular saving has been eschewed, because why bother if you have £500,000 tied up in your house.
"Tax cuts" is not a policy. It is a code for "I don't know what to do, but I'd sure like to live in Downing Street".
Where are the Thatchers, the Howes, the Ridleys, the Josephs, the people who recognized the problem, and had the guts to tell people that solving it would not be easy?
Yes, the lack of replays is a worry, please don't be a Jules Bianchi.
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
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11m
Theresa May to deliver lecture on public service on Thu HT Politico
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1543601070630477824
Red flag saved us.
And even in the NE of England a house is *average* 170K: average salary 27.5K - so on a 3 + 1 basis that means about 60K deposit. How realistic is that?
[edit: ignoring pro tem the distribution curve for each variable, obvs.]
I knew of a train driver who killed someone who committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, poor bloke was haunted for the rest of his life.
Twitter says so 🤷♂️
Also - what on earth are extinction rebellion thinking? Utterly ludicrous
@AlphonsoVM
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13h
#Boston mayor condemns 'white supremacist' march through city.
The group of about 100 marchers, most hiding their faces, identified themselves via flyers as belonging to the white nationalist group the Patriot Front.
https://twitter.com/AlphonsoVM/status/1543396514936102913
https://twitter.com/megslou99/status/1543603892398821380
https://twitter.com/goosemeister96/status/1543596920450465792
So as your own figures prove, average house prices in the North East are just 25% the average house price in London. Most deposits are 10% to 15% not 30% as you wrongly stated so easily affordable on the average income, especially for the average household income in the North East which will be more than the £25k single figure.
Hence the Tories had their best result in generations in the North East in 2019, helped by rising home ownership as well as pro Brexit sentiment in complete contrast to London
actually not so true anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xzW0xJ_Dls
However, there are a few things that could be done right now, such as bringing interest rates up (BoE independence aside), stricter mortgage lending criteria, increasing taxes on second homes, punitive taxation of undeveloped land being held in land banks, easing of planning restrictions, more medium density (5 storey) properties, maybe even a state funded construction company building thousands of houses at cost to compete with the developer oligopoly. Oh, and ending leasehold so flats are attractive purchases again - at the moment they're not.
BREAKING: Turkey detains a Russian cargo ship possessing grain stolen from Ukraine
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1543608910724169737
A high mortgage plus interest rate rises ...
Exclude London, the biggest global city in Europe by gdp and the UK figures look much more like the OECD average
https://www.birdandco.co.uk/site/blog/conveyancing-blog/midlands-has-the-highest-home-ownership-rate-in-england
The issue has been crap planning policy leading to insufficient housebuilding, and low interest rates creating inflated house prices, speculation, and the rise of buy-to-let.
Should we remove Paris from France? The Rhineland from Germany? The Eastern seaboard and California from the US?
As far as leasehold on flats is concerned they should all be sold on a 999 year lease and a peppercorn ground rent
Unfortunately we have a policy vacuum from all the main parties and not just on housing but across all aspects of government and while the conservatives are in total disarray, a labour government facing the same problems would be struggling within months of gaining office
I have no doubt the next election is a good one to lose
Unless you think London and Scotland are still in the EU?
5. (likewise) even utilities are foreign-owned so Rishi writes subsidy cheques to foreign governments.
The Rhineland-Palatinate is cheaper than London and Paris as it has no big global city.
The solution to an ageing population is to age healthier, work well for longer, and require less care during our elder years. I think that's do-able with small changes to food production and preparation of dietary staples, and better dietary and health advice. This would also lighten the load on hospitals.
It's likely that there's an easy way through everything else too.
Edit: I'll give you a hint. The piss and shite are mixed. Not separate.
You look at everything through the prism of what is good for the Tory Party, in fact you are part of the problem.
You and your ilk have cheerled the country into decline.
The British public can be convinced of the necessity to munch shit, but it requires honesty, an air of competence, a sense of fairness, and an absence of hypocrisy.
If you let 15 people live in your house, you risk running out of bedrooms
Vast countries like the USA, Canada or Australia can allow great waves of immigration. They can build entire new towns one after the other without wrecking the landscape
We cannot. So the irresistible force of mass immigration meets the immovable object of English resistance to endless development, et voila
Round here, the new ones're smallish, but rather good on external inspection, with separate back yards and parking areas.
But, it’s not the main issue for demand.
You can look up the stats on gross household formation and the factors behind it.
Unfortunately I am “out and about” and don’t have the dexterity to open multiple tabs.
The absence of clear thinking - not just in the political class, but also in the media - is a depressing component of the problem.
'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.'
At present, we don't really have peace - at least we're spending billions prosecuting a war (thank goodness we're not shedding British blood, just treasure), we don't have easy taxes by any stretch of the imagination, and whether we have tolerable administration of justice is highly debatable.
A lot of complex solutions can mooted, but we should try the simpler ones first imo.
I don't know how serious this is now, though?
I fear a lot of pain is heading the way of all politicians and unfortunately the public will be the ones paying the price, quite literally