Another interesting watch from Russia. Solovyov now seems to be in a minority of 1. He is going mental demanding that Russia use nukes to defend their territory (i.e. the new ones). The other panellists are basically saying that they aren't even really Russian. The fact that they are saying this on TV in Russia is quite something.
Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov had clearly given up on the idea of defeating Ukraine militarily. In his desperation to scare the West into stopping its support, he resorts to nuclear threats—but even fellow propagandists are sick of it & say he lost all sense of reality. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1594915216026112000
We might be making a mistake if we read too much into these talking heads. They are there to confuse the Russian population about what is going on. There is no single message, just interpretations of narratives.
"Russian political talk shows should therefore be taken for what they are: propaganda pieces that serve to entertain, generate ratings, shape public opinion, and — perhaps most significantly of all — confound viewers.
The lack of consistency in Russian propaganda is arguably a feature rather than a bug. Providing multiple contradictory interpretations of the same event is a tactic deliberately used by the Kremlin to bewilder and paralyze the Russian public. While talk show narratives have typically been confined to domestic audiences in the past, the increased attention accorded them since the war began has — while extending their reach and growing their viewership — arguably also exaggerated their significance."
Their last series of lockdowns was to buy time to vaccinate their population. But the amount of vaccine hesitancy in China is really high, especially amongst the older generations (which is especially bad for covid), and they've failed again.
It’s disastrous for China. How can they ever exit the cycle of Covid/lockdown? This is three years on and we have really good vaccines - but Xi blunders on
Why don't they take up the vaccines. They had their own initially, Sinovac, but there are now so many vaccines about and plenty of capacity. Surely they should just crack on and vaccinate and live with it. Like we are doing.
I'm very pro-vaccination, but if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship with a track record of forced sterilisation and other offences against medical ethics I would be a lot more nervous about it.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
I would too but (1) I don't think that that is what Brexit will deliver and (2) I think it is a false choice because an economy that doesn't grow is more not less likely to involve declining living standards for the less well off.
Brexit may or may not deliver it but certainly when we were in the EU we were in situation a). We had growth and people were saying isnt the economy great while the bottom half of the population found life harder and harder.
I also put 0 growth in to make a point. A booming economy is only a good thing if it is lifting all boats. It is not an intrinsically good thing in and of itself.
Now I hope we will get to b with some growth, though maybe not as much as we would have if we were in the eu but its going to be a long slog with many strands needed to be in place.
Two strands I believe removal of FoM solves.
First it rebalances the supply and demand nature of the jobs market whereas before we had for all intents infinite supply and that seems to be to an extent working with wage rises for a lot that hadnt seen any for years when you discount legally mandated minimum wage rises.
Secondly and jury is still out on this one and it will take time to work through. As managers realise they can't just throw more cheap labour at a task they will start thinking about how to increase productivity via automation. An example often cited being a french building site the first thing they set up is a mini crane whereas we hire bodies to carry bricks around.
There are many other strands we need to work on such as monetising ip generated from universities, encouraging entrepreneurship, encouraging long term thinking in business etc.
Our main problem now sadly is we are led by pygmies...not only politicians but senior managers
There was a big blip associated with COVID-19, but otherwise total immigration to the UK has been pretty unchanged by Brexit. Your argument about the labour market seems to fall down if ending FoM doesn’t actually change the amount of immigration.
Also, you make a comparison to a French building site. France, of course, is in the EU and has FoM. So, why are the French better at making that sort of investment?
France has labour laws which makes companies reluctant to recruit as its difficult to get rid of them is probably one reason.
As to the immigration remaining the same I would say its not feeding into labour supply for the following reasons
a ) a lot of non eu immigration is family based and not necessarily here to join the work force whereas most FoM was young people coming to join our work force
b ) How do you know immigration is the same we had no idea how many were coming in as the home office is useless and didn't count them but relied on some people with clip boards at a few airports and ports asking a random selection of people. Since brexit there have been some huge anomalies between the number the government thought we had and the number applying for leave to stay
c ) Migration is now points based and the people coming in aren't going into bar work or waiting tables or being a barista
So, maybe what we need is labour laws more like the French?
a) There was plenty of family-based immigration when we were in the EU. There’s plenty now. I’ve not seen stats showing a major shift in this.
“ ‘Worker’ visas (previously known as ‘skilled work’) accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all work-related visas granted with 216,450 grants. This is almost double (+96%) when compared to equivalent routes in 2019, with the growth driven by the introduction of the ‘Skilled Worker’ visa in 2020. Grants from ‘Temporary Worker’ routes have also increased by 67% to 72,526, following an increase in the number of visas available through the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route, from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”
Yes which is what I said skilled workers, not waiters, barista's and bar staff. They are not competing with minimum wage workers.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
Their last series of lockdowns was to buy time to vaccinate their population. But the amount of vaccine hesitancy in China is really high, especially amongst the older generations (which is especially bad for covid), and they've failed again.
It’s disastrous for China. How can they ever exit the cycle of Covid/lockdown? This is three years on and we have really good vaccines - but Xi blunders on
Why don't they take up the vaccines. They had their own initially, Sinovac, but there are now so many vaccines about and plenty of capacity. Surely they should just crack on and vaccinate and live with it. Like we are doing.
I'm very pro-vaccination, but if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship with a track record of forced sterilisation and other offences against medical ethics I would be a lot more nervous about it.
Totalitarian dictatorship loses again.
IIRC the Chinese vaccines are fairly poor against the most recent variants.
There was some quite racists propaganda, saying that Chinese people needed to take Chinese vaccines, because they are different. How much that was government directed is a question, but it put many people off the Western vaccines.
Their last series of lockdowns was to buy time to vaccinate their population. But the amount of vaccine hesitancy in China is really high, especially amongst the older generations (which is especially bad for covid), and they've failed again.
It’s disastrous for China. How can they ever exit the cycle of Covid/lockdown? This is three years on and we have really good vaccines - but Xi blunders on
Why don't they take up the vaccines. They had their own initially, Sinovac, but there are now so many vaccines about and plenty of capacity. Surely they should just crack on and vaccinate and live with it. Like we are doing.
I'm very pro-vaccination, but if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship with a track record of forced sterilisation and other offences against medical ethics I would be a lot more nervous about it.
Totalitarian dictatorship loses again.
A Russian friend put it rather well - "I have total faith in the bio-chemical capabilities of the Russian state."
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
In the last three decades we have had a planning system that doesn't deliver the number of houses built we need and, increasingly, gives most development that does happen to the big corporates.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Their last series of lockdowns was to buy time to vaccinate their population. But the amount of vaccine hesitancy in China is really high, especially amongst the older generations (which is especially bad for covid), and they've failed again.
It’s disastrous for China. How can they ever exit the cycle of Covid/lockdown? This is three years on and we have really good vaccines - but Xi blunders on
Why don't they take up the vaccines. They had their own initially, Sinovac, but there are now so many vaccines about and plenty of capacity. Surely they should just crack on and vaccinate and live with it. Like we are doing.
I'm very pro-vaccination, but if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship with a track record of forced sterilisation and other offences against medical ethics I would be a lot more nervous about it.
Totalitarian dictatorship loses again.
IIRC the Chinese vaccines are fairly poor against the most recent variants.
There was some quite racists propaganda, saying that Chinese people needed to take Chinese vaccines, because they are different. How much that was government directed is a question, but it put many people off the Western vaccines.
My in-laws got at least one dose of a Chinese vax last year (Sinovac, I think). Since then, they've had four or five other jabs of various sorts and combinations. They both caught Covid a few weeks back, and aside from headaches and flu-like symptoms, were fine.
I've suggested that they try to have every variant of the vaccine; gotta get 'em all!
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
Their last series of lockdowns was to buy time to vaccinate their population. But the amount of vaccine hesitancy in China is really high, especially amongst the older generations (which is especially bad for covid), and they've failed again.
It’s disastrous for China. How can they ever exit the cycle of Covid/lockdown? This is three years on and we have really good vaccines - but Xi blunders on
Why don't they take up the vaccines. They had their own initially, Sinovac, but there are now so many vaccines about and plenty of capacity. Surely they should just crack on and vaccinate and live with it. Like we are doing.
I'm very pro-vaccination, but if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship with a track record of forced sterilisation and other offences against medical ethics I would be a lot more nervous about it.
Totalitarian dictatorship loses again.
IIRC the Chinese vaccines are fairly poor against the most recent variants.
There was some quite racists propaganda, saying that Chinese people needed to take Chinese vaccines, because they are different. How much that was government directed is a question, but it put many people off the Western vaccines.
My in-laws got at least one dose of a Chinese vax last year (Sinovac, I think). Since then, they've had four or five other jabs of various sorts and combinations. They both caught Covid a few weeks back, and aside from headaches and flu-like symptoms, were fine.
I've suggested that they try to have every variant of the vaccine; gotta get 'em all!
IIRC wasn't there a trial which suggested that a particular mix of vaccines was optimal? Seem to recall it involved Moderna....
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
I would too but (1) I don't think that that is what Brexit will deliver and (2) I think it is a false choice because an economy that doesn't grow is more not less likely to involve declining living standards for the less well off.
Brexit may or may not deliver it but certainly when we were in the EU we were in situation a). We had growth and people were saying isnt the economy great while the bottom half of the population found life harder and harder.
I also put 0 growth in to make a point. A booming economy is only a good thing if it is lifting all boats. It is not an intrinsically good thing in and of itself.
Now I hope we will get to b with some growth, though maybe not as much as we would have if we were in the eu but its going to be a long slog with many strands needed to be in place.
Two strands I believe removal of FoM solves.
First it rebalances the supply and demand nature of the jobs market whereas before we had for all intents infinite supply and that seems to be to an extent working with wage rises for a lot that hadnt seen any for years when you discount legally mandated minimum wage rises.
Secondly and jury is still out on this one and it will take time to work through. As managers realise they can't just throw more cheap labour at a task they will start thinking about how to increase productivity via automation. An example often cited being a french building site the first thing they set up is a mini crane whereas we hire bodies to carry bricks around.
There are many other strands we need to work on such as monetising ip generated from universities, encouraging entrepreneurship, encouraging long term thinking in business etc.
Our main problem now sadly is we are led by pygmies...not only politicians but senior managers
There was a big blip associated with COVID-19, but otherwise total immigration to the UK has been pretty unchanged by Brexit. Your argument about the labour market seems to fall down if ending FoM doesn’t actually change the amount of immigration.
Also, you make a comparison to a French building site. France, of course, is in the EU and has FoM. So, why are the French better at making that sort of investment?
France has labour laws which makes companies reluctant to recruit as its difficult to get rid of them is probably one reason.
As to the immigration remaining the same I would say its not feeding into labour supply for the following reasons
a ) a lot of non eu immigration is family based and not necessarily here to join the work force whereas most FoM was young people coming to join our work force
b ) How do you know immigration is the same we had no idea how many were coming in as the home office is useless and didn't count them but relied on some people with clip boards at a few airports and ports asking a random selection of people. Since brexit there have been some huge anomalies between the number the government thought we had and the number applying for leave to stay
c ) Migration is now points based and the people coming in aren't going into bar work or waiting tables or being a barista
So, maybe what we need is labour laws more like the French?
a) There was plenty of family-based immigration when we were in the EU. There’s plenty now. I’ve not seen stats showing a major shift in this.
“ ‘Worker’ visas (previously known as ‘skilled work’) accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all work-related visas granted with 216,450 grants. This is almost double (+96%) when compared to equivalent routes in 2019, with the growth driven by the introduction of the ‘Skilled Worker’ visa in 2020. Grants from ‘Temporary Worker’ routes have also increased by 67% to 72,526, following an increase in the number of visas available through the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route, from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”
Yes which is what I said skilled workers, not waiters, barista's and bar staff. They are not competing with minimum wage workers.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
Who do you think the seasonal workers are, who have increased from 2500 to 40000, a 16-fold increase? Are they not competing with minimum wage workers? We may not have exact counts on immigration, but we do know how many visas have been issued.
We may have “taken back control”, but what Conservative governments have decided to do with that control is to keep immigration for work high. If you want the labour supply to be restricted, Brexit hasn’t delivered that.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
I would too but (1) I don't think that that is what Brexit will deliver and (2) I think it is a false choice because an economy that doesn't grow is more not less likely to involve declining living standards for the less well off.
Brexit may or may not deliver it but certainly when we were in the EU we were in situation a). We had growth and people were saying isnt the economy great while the bottom half of the population found life harder and harder.
I also put 0 growth in to make a point. A booming economy is only a good thing if it is lifting all boats. It is not an intrinsically good thing in and of itself.
Now I hope we will get to b with some growth, though maybe not as much as we would have if we were in the eu but its going to be a long slog with many strands needed to be in place.
Two strands I believe removal of FoM solves.
First it rebalances the supply and demand nature of the jobs market whereas before we had for all intents infinite supply and that seems to be to an extent working with wage rises for a lot that hadnt seen any for years when you discount legally mandated minimum wage rises.
Secondly and jury is still out on this one and it will take time to work through. As managers realise they can't just throw more cheap labour at a task they will start thinking about how to increase productivity via automation. An example often cited being a french building site the first thing they set up is a mini crane whereas we hire bodies to carry bricks around.
There are many other strands we need to work on such as monetising ip generated from universities, encouraging entrepreneurship, encouraging long term thinking in business etc.
Our main problem now sadly is we are led by pygmies...not only politicians but senior managers
There was a big blip associated with COVID-19, but otherwise total immigration to the UK has been pretty unchanged by Brexit. Your argument about the labour market seems to fall down if ending FoM doesn’t actually change the amount of immigration.
Also, you make a comparison to a French building site. France, of course, is in the EU and has FoM. So, why are the French better at making that sort of investment?
France has labour laws which makes companies reluctant to recruit as its difficult to get rid of them is probably one reason.
As to the immigration remaining the same I would say its not feeding into labour supply for the following reasons
a ) a lot of non eu immigration is family based and not necessarily here to join the work force whereas most FoM was young people coming to join our work force
b ) How do you know immigration is the same we had no idea how many were coming in as the home office is useless and didn't count them but relied on some people with clip boards at a few airports and ports asking a random selection of people. Since brexit there have been some huge anomalies between the number the government thought we had and the number applying for leave to stay
c ) Migration is now points based and the people coming in aren't going into bar work or waiting tables or being a barista
So, maybe what we need is labour laws more like the French?
a) There was plenty of family-based immigration when we were in the EU. There’s plenty now. I’ve not seen stats showing a major shift in this.
“ ‘Worker’ visas (previously known as ‘skilled work’) accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all work-related visas granted with 216,450 grants. This is almost double (+96%) when compared to equivalent routes in 2019, with the growth driven by the introduction of the ‘Skilled Worker’ visa in 2020. Grants from ‘Temporary Worker’ routes have also increased by 67% to 72,526, following an increase in the number of visas available through the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route, from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”
Yes which is what I said skilled workers, not waiters, barista's and bar staff. They are not competing with minimum wage workers.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
Who do you think the seasonal workers are, who have increased from 2500 to 40000, a 16-fold increase? Are they not competing with minimum wage workers? We may not have exact counts on immigration, but we do know how many visas have been issued.
We may have “taken back control”, but what Conservative governments have decided to do with that control is to keep immigration for work high. If you want the labour supply to be restricted, Brexit hasn’t delivered that.
What is the cause of the observed labour market pressure in the lower skilled jobs?
Numerous employers not getting staff and offering higher pay to try and get them.
“WATCH: Scenes of unrest emerged in China’s Guangzhou as residents knocked over quarantine barriers and flooded the streets after a Covid lockdown was extended.
This was a rare show of protest against China's zero-Covid policy, which has been in force for nearly three years.”
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
In the last three decades we have had a planning system that doesn't deliver the number of houses built we need and, increasingly, gives most development that does happen to the big corporates.
This is not an attack on you.
We have built a system that does the above.
We need a different way.
We do. But what we seem to be getting is adding a further blockage step rather than developing a new approach.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
I would too but (1) I don't think that that is what Brexit will deliver and (2) I think it is a false choice because an economy that doesn't grow is more not less likely to involve declining living standards for the less well off.
Brexit may or may not deliver it but certainly when we were in the EU we were in situation a). We had growth and people were saying isnt the economy great while the bottom half of the population found life harder and harder.
I also put 0 growth in to make a point. A booming economy is only a good thing if it is lifting all boats. It is not an intrinsically good thing in and of itself.
Now I hope we will get to b with some growth, though maybe not as much as we would have if we were in the eu but its going to be a long slog with many strands needed to be in place.
Two strands I believe removal of FoM solves.
First it rebalances the supply and demand nature of the jobs market whereas before we had for all intents infinite supply and that seems to be to an extent working with wage rises for a lot that hadnt seen any for years when you discount legally mandated minimum wage rises.
Secondly and jury is still out on this one and it will take time to work through. As managers realise they can't just throw more cheap labour at a task they will start thinking about how to increase productivity via automation. An example often cited being a french building site the first thing they set up is a mini crane whereas we hire bodies to carry bricks around.
There are many other strands we need to work on such as monetising ip generated from universities, encouraging entrepreneurship, encouraging long term thinking in business etc.
Our main problem now sadly is we are led by pygmies...not only politicians but senior managers
There was a big blip associated with COVID-19, but otherwise total immigration to the UK has been pretty unchanged by Brexit. Your argument about the labour market seems to fall down if ending FoM doesn’t actually change the amount of immigration.
Also, you make a comparison to a French building site. France, of course, is in the EU and has FoM. So, why are the French better at making that sort of investment?
France has labour laws which makes companies reluctant to recruit as its difficult to get rid of them is probably one reason.
As to the immigration remaining the same I would say its not feeding into labour supply for the following reasons
a ) a lot of non eu immigration is family based and not necessarily here to join the work force whereas most FoM was young people coming to join our work force
b ) How do you know immigration is the same we had no idea how many were coming in as the home office is useless and didn't count them but relied on some people with clip boards at a few airports and ports asking a random selection of people. Since brexit there have been some huge anomalies between the number the government thought we had and the number applying for leave to stay
c ) Migration is now points based and the people coming in aren't going into bar work or waiting tables or being a barista
So, maybe what we need is labour laws more like the French?
a) There was plenty of family-based immigration when we were in the EU. There’s plenty now. I’ve not seen stats showing a major shift in this.
“ ‘Worker’ visas (previously known as ‘skilled work’) accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all work-related visas granted with 216,450 grants. This is almost double (+96%) when compared to equivalent routes in 2019, with the growth driven by the introduction of the ‘Skilled Worker’ visa in 2020. Grants from ‘Temporary Worker’ routes have also increased by 67% to 72,526, following an increase in the number of visas available through the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route, from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”
Yes which is what I said skilled workers, not waiters, barista's and bar staff. They are not competing with minimum wage workers.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
Who do you think the seasonal workers are, who have increased from 2500 to 40000, a 16-fold increase? Are they not competing with minimum wage workers? We may not have exact counts on immigration, but we do know how many visas have been issued.
We may have “taken back control”, but what Conservative governments have decided to do with that control is to keep immigration for work high. If you want the labour supply to be restricted, Brexit hasn’t delivered that.
Brexiters fall over themselves to say how immigration isn't the problem, control over immigration is the issue. I think PB is over-represented by theoretical, immigration-friendly Brexiters whereas I'm none too sure that Brexiters at large are quite so fussed about the minutiae of who controls what and just want to see fewer foreigners.
That said, Brexit or no Brexit we need immigration so it is just a different flavour of immigration. Brexiters again can't stop bleating about why should the Indian sub-continent be disadvantated vs, say, Belgians, but the fact is that the UK is not in control of its need for immigration, no matter whether we are in or out of the EU.
Their last series of lockdowns was to buy time to vaccinate their population. But the amount of vaccine hesitancy in China is really high, especially amongst the older generations (which is especially bad for covid), and they've failed again.
It’s disastrous for China. How can they ever exit the cycle of Covid/lockdown? This is three years on and we have really good vaccines - but Xi blunders on
Why don't they take up the vaccines. They had their own initially, Sinovac, but there are now so many vaccines about and plenty of capacity. Surely they should just crack on and vaccinate and live with it. Like we are doing.
I'm very pro-vaccination, but if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship with a track record of forced sterilisation and other offences against medical ethics I would be a lot more nervous about it.
Totalitarian dictatorship loses again.
IIRC the Chinese vaccines are fairly poor against the most recent variants.
There was some quite racists propaganda, saying that Chinese people needed to take Chinese vaccines, because they are different. How much that was government directed is a question, but it put many people off the Western vaccines.
My in-laws got at least one dose of a Chinese vax last year (Sinovac, I think). Since then, they've had four or five other jabs of various sorts and combinations. They both caught Covid a few weeks back, and aside from headaches and flu-like symptoms, were fine.
I've suggested that they try to have every variant of the vaccine; gotta get 'em all!
IIRC wasn't there a trial which suggested that a particular mix of vaccines was optimal? Seem to recall it involved Moderna....
I think best has been a combo of vaccines plus natural infection. Tbh in the UK we've pretty much all been exposed to the virus in its many variants now, and that memory will last a long time in the immune system. It will probably take some of the nasal delivery vaccines if we are to arrive at a better 'stop infecton' vaccine than the current situation (limits seriousnous of infection).
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
I would too but (1) I don't think that that is what Brexit will deliver and (2) I think it is a false choice because an economy that doesn't grow is more not less likely to involve declining living standards for the less well off.
Brexit may or may not deliver it but certainly when we were in the EU we were in situation a). We had growth and people were saying isnt the economy great while the bottom half of the population found life harder and harder.
I also put 0 growth in to make a point. A booming economy is only a good thing if it is lifting all boats. It is not an intrinsically good thing in and of itself.
Now I hope we will get to b with some growth, though maybe not as much as we would have if we were in the eu but its going to be a long slog with many strands needed to be in place.
Two strands I believe removal of FoM solves.
First it rebalances the supply and demand nature of the jobs market whereas before we had for all intents infinite supply and that seems to be to an extent working with wage rises for a lot that hadnt seen any for years when you discount legally mandated minimum wage rises.
Secondly and jury is still out on this one and it will take time to work through. As managers realise they can't just throw more cheap labour at a task they will start thinking about how to increase productivity via automation. An example often cited being a french building site the first thing they set up is a mini crane whereas we hire bodies to carry bricks around.
There are many other strands we need to work on such as monetising ip generated from universities, encouraging entrepreneurship, encouraging long term thinking in business etc.
Our main problem now sadly is we are led by pygmies...not only politicians but senior managers
There was a big blip associated with COVID-19, but otherwise total immigration to the UK has been pretty unchanged by Brexit. Your argument about the labour market seems to fall down if ending FoM doesn’t actually change the amount of immigration.
Also, you make a comparison to a French building site. France, of course, is in the EU and has FoM. So, why are the French better at making that sort of investment?
France has labour laws which makes companies reluctant to recruit as its difficult to get rid of them is probably one reason.
As to the immigration remaining the same I would say its not feeding into labour supply for the following reasons
a ) a lot of non eu immigration is family based and not necessarily here to join the work force whereas most FoM was young people coming to join our work force
b ) How do you know immigration is the same we had no idea how many were coming in as the home office is useless and didn't count them but relied on some people with clip boards at a few airports and ports asking a random selection of people. Since brexit there have been some huge anomalies between the number the government thought we had and the number applying for leave to stay
c ) Migration is now points based and the people coming in aren't going into bar work or waiting tables or being a barista
So, maybe what we need is labour laws more like the French?
a) There was plenty of family-based immigration when we were in the EU. There’s plenty now. I’ve not seen stats showing a major shift in this.
“ ‘Worker’ visas (previously known as ‘skilled work’) accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all work-related visas granted with 216,450 grants. This is almost double (+96%) when compared to equivalent routes in 2019, with the growth driven by the introduction of the ‘Skilled Worker’ visa in 2020. Grants from ‘Temporary Worker’ routes have also increased by 67% to 72,526, following an increase in the number of visas available through the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route, from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”
Yes which is what I said skilled workers, not waiters, barista's and bar staff. They are not competing with minimum wage workers.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
Who do you think the seasonal workers are, who have increased from 2500 to 40000, a 16-fold increase? Are they not competing with minimum wage workers? We may not have exact counts on immigration, but we do know how many visas have been issued.
We may have “taken back control”, but what Conservative governments have decided to do with that control is to keep immigration for work high. If you want the labour supply to be restricted, Brexit hasn’t delivered that.
What is the cause of the observed labour market pressure in the lower skilled jobs?
Numerous employers not getting staff and offering higher pay to try and get them.
Oxford Economics in a report say: “Tightness in the jobs market reflects a dip in labour supply, resulting from higher flows from employment to inactivity. This has been due to sickness, low net inward migration during the pandemic, and more people taking early retirement.”
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Our 'village' is being extended by 2,350 homes (currently 4,250). On top of this, the local council is using land that had previously been set aside for employment into a further 260 homes.
I have no problem with the former development; it was clear that the surrounding land was going to be developed (and there will be more developments in other surrounding areas).
The 260 homes does bother me: the land had been set aside for employment (e.g. offices), and is now going to be housing, meaning that we become even more of a dormitory for Cambridge. I'm dead-set against it, especially as the employment land in the former new development has also been reduced to cram in more houses.
I am also concerned that the new facilities we will be getting to deal with a near doubling of our population are sparse, to say the least. Facilities that are already overwhelmed will break. The pharmacy already has; the GP surgery has been a basketcase for years.
I am not against development, but I do want to ensure that idiots like the local council don't just chuck up houses without ensuring they create livable spaces and communities.
Does that make me a nimby? I've been called one, despite being one of those in favour of other developments...
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
I would too but (1) I don't think that that is what Brexit will deliver and (2) I think it is a false choice because an economy that doesn't grow is more not less likely to involve declining living standards for the less well off.
Brexit may or may not deliver it but certainly when we were in the EU we were in situation a). We had growth and people were saying isnt the economy great while the bottom half of the population found life harder and harder.
I also put 0 growth in to make a point. A booming economy is only a good thing if it is lifting all boats. It is not an intrinsically good thing in and of itself.
Now I hope we will get to b with some growth, though maybe not as much as we would have if we were in the eu but its going to be a long slog with many strands needed to be in place.
Two strands I believe removal of FoM solves.
First it rebalances the supply and demand nature of the jobs market whereas before we had for all intents infinite supply and that seems to be to an extent working with wage rises for a lot that hadnt seen any for years when you discount legally mandated minimum wage rises.
Secondly and jury is still out on this one and it will take time to work through. As managers realise they can't just throw more cheap labour at a task they will start thinking about how to increase productivity via automation. An example often cited being a french building site the first thing they set up is a mini crane whereas we hire bodies to carry bricks around.
There are many other strands we need to work on such as monetising ip generated from universities, encouraging entrepreneurship, encouraging long term thinking in business etc.
Our main problem now sadly is we are led by pygmies...not only politicians but senior managers
There was a big blip associated with COVID-19, but otherwise total immigration to the UK has been pretty unchanged by Brexit. Your argument about the labour market seems to fall down if ending FoM doesn’t actually change the amount of immigration.
Also, you make a comparison to a French building site. France, of course, is in the EU and has FoM. So, why are the French better at making that sort of investment?
France has labour laws which makes companies reluctant to recruit as its difficult to get rid of them is probably one reason.
As to the immigration remaining the same I would say its not feeding into labour supply for the following reasons
a ) a lot of non eu immigration is family based and not necessarily here to join the work force whereas most FoM was young people coming to join our work force
b ) How do you know immigration is the same we had no idea how many were coming in as the home office is useless and didn't count them but relied on some people with clip boards at a few airports and ports asking a random selection of people. Since brexit there have been some huge anomalies between the number the government thought we had and the number applying for leave to stay
c ) Migration is now points based and the people coming in aren't going into bar work or waiting tables or being a barista
So, maybe what we need is labour laws more like the French?
a) There was plenty of family-based immigration when we were in the EU. There’s plenty now. I’ve not seen stats showing a major shift in this.
“ ‘Worker’ visas (previously known as ‘skilled work’) accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all work-related visas granted with 216,450 grants. This is almost double (+96%) when compared to equivalent routes in 2019, with the growth driven by the introduction of the ‘Skilled Worker’ visa in 2020. Grants from ‘Temporary Worker’ routes have also increased by 67% to 72,526, following an increase in the number of visas available through the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route, from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”
Yes which is what I said skilled workers, not waiters, barista's and bar staff. They are not competing with minimum wage workers.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
Who do you think the seasonal workers are, who have increased from 2500 to 40000, a 16-fold increase? Are they not competing with minimum wage workers? We may not have exact counts on immigration, but we do know how many visas have been issued.
We may have “taken back control”, but what Conservative governments have decided to do with that control is to keep immigration for work high. If you want the labour supply to be restricted, Brexit hasn’t delivered that.
What is the cause of the observed labour market pressure in the lower skilled jobs?
Numerous employers not getting staff and offering higher pay to try and get them.
Oxford Economics in a report say: “Tightness in the jobs market reflects a dip in labour supply, resulting from higher flows from employment to inactivity. This has been due to sickness, low net inward migration during the pandemic, and more people taking early retirement.”
Do we have a breakdown in who retired early? The poorly paid usually have shit pensions.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the focus of UK governments should be more on reducing our level of inequality than on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
I agree that those at the bottom should be able to live a life of dignity on the fruit of their labour. I don't care if inequality remains as it is now as long as the bottom most can goto work in the knowledge it pays them enough to have shelter, food, warmth with some left over for some of the nicer things in life...a good meal out, a holiday etc.
I do not think the two are the same thing.
To achieve a significant increase in the living standards of the lower quartile without a significant decrease in inequality requires a level of sustainable economic growth that is looking increasingly improbable. So like it or not with your views you should be a warrior against inequality. There'll be a warm welcome when you realize this. And I'll save you a seat.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
What is the point in being "anti" something which has already happened?
What's the point of being "pro" something that's shit?
No answer, then.
I literally answered your question. Being for or against things rather than simply accepting everything as it is is surely the essence of politics. I'm surprised that this needs spelling out to someone who contributes BTL on a political blog!
No, you really didn't. Asking a different (albeit related) question is not answering the question!
The point is: defining yourself as still being "for" or "against" something that has already happened is pointless, and detracts from where you should be, which is being "for" something that can be done in future to improve things. "I wouldn't start from here" is a waste of time.
Okay, I am against Brexit and would like to see its negative effects ameliorated in the short term. In the long run I would like to see it reversed. Is that alright?
No, because you're still wasting time being "against" something that has already happened.
"I am against Brexit" is silly.
So what do you make of people who say they are "against multiculturalism" then?
Least Brexit is a concrete single event that can be undone.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Our 'village' is being extended by 2,350 homes (currently 4,250). On top of this, the local council is using land that had previously been set aside for employment into a further 260 homes.
I have no problem with the former development; it was clear that the surrounding land was going to be developed (and there will be more developments in other surrounding areas).
The 260 homes does bother me: the land had been set aside for employment (e.g. offices), and is now going to be housing, meaning that we become even more of a dormitory for Cambridge. I'm dead-set against it, especially as the employment land in the former new development has also been reduced to cram in more houses.
I am also concerned that the new facilities we will be getting to deal with a near doubling of our population are sparse, to say the least. Facilities that are already overwhelmed will break. The pharmacy already has; the GP surgery has been a basketcase for years.
I am not against development, but I do want to ensure that idiots like the local council don't just chuck up houses without ensuring they create livable spaces and communities.
Does that make me a nimby? I've been called one, despite being one of those in favour of other developments...
If its a village, why not use more land for the offices? If the village evolves into a bigger village or even a town, then what's the problem with that?
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Again, unlike you.
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Let's build Heathrow's sixth runway at the bottom of Barty's garden, then. Everyone happy.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
What is the point in being "anti" something which has already happened?
What's the point of being "pro" something that's shit?
No answer, then.
I literally answered your question. Being for or against things rather than simply accepting everything as it is is surely the essence of politics. I'm surprised that this needs spelling out to someone who contributes BTL on a political blog!
No, you really didn't. Asking a different (albeit related) question is not answering the question!
The point is: defining yourself as still being "for" or "against" something that has already happened is pointless, and detracts from where you should be, which is being "for" something that can be done in future to improve things. "I wouldn't start from here" is a waste of time.
Okay, I am against Brexit and would like to see its negative effects ameliorated in the short term. In the long run I would like to see it reversed. Is that alright?
No, because you're still wasting time being "against" something that has already happened.
"I am against Brexit" is silly.
So what do you make of people who say they are "against multiculturalism" then?
Least Brexit is a concrete single event that can be undone.
No, it's not - the status quo ante is no longer available.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Our 'village' is being extended by 2,350 homes (currently 4,250). On top of this, the local council is using land that had previously been set aside for employment into a further 260 homes.
I have no problem with the former development; it was clear that the surrounding land was going to be developed (and there will be more developments in other surrounding areas).
The 260 homes does bother me: the land had been set aside for employment (e.g. offices), and is now going to be housing, meaning that we become even more of a dormitory for Cambridge. I'm dead-set against it, especially as the employment land in the former new development has also been reduced to cram in more houses.
I am also concerned that the new facilities we will be getting to deal with a near doubling of our population are sparse, to say the least. Facilities that are already overwhelmed will break. The pharmacy already has; the GP surgery has been a basketcase for years.
I am not against development, but I do want to ensure that idiots like the local council don't just chuck up houses without ensuring they create livable spaces and communities.
Does that make me a nimby? I've been called one, despite being one of those in favour of other developments...
If its a village, why not use more land for the offices? If the village evolves into a bigger village or even a town, then what's the problem with that?
I think you've misread what I said (or I have not said it clearly enough): I am not against expansion of the 'village' (*); far from. What I don't like is expanding it and not improving local services. I particularly don't like expansion that uses land designated for other purposes to housing. There is no 'replacement' employment land for the area lost.
A community is much more than just housing.
(*) It was originally set up in 1997 as three independent villages, connected by a winding spine road, with green areas between them. It is now classed as a town, but almost everyone calls it a 'village'
Well exactly. Do you think people in China are aware that the rest of the world has long since moved on? Barring a tiny handful of freakish continuity zerocovidians nobody in the west seems scared anymore.
This is what scares the Chinese leaders (graph from John Burn-Murdoch):
It shows the effect of having enough people scared of vaccines.
Omicron has made a big difference, and presumably it is one of its varieties in China. Miserable to have, and not without long covid type vascular problems, but rare to get the fatal lung features of original covid, so I think hospitals getting overwhelmed is less of an issue.
China is on a losing strategy. Omicron is essentially uncontrollable in terms of spread, though vaccines will further attenuate severity.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
There are tremendous externalities to new houses.
I quite like the Victorian/Edwardian approach. They laid out areas, built train lines, roads, sewers, gas mains, school & hospitals. Then sold the plots of land to be developed - often by one side of a street.
Seems to have worked pretty well. If we could capture the heat of the anger of those who scream about "why do the shit scum love Edwardian houses instead of Proper Modern Planning And Construction?" we could solve the energy crisis overnight.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
There are tremendous externalities to new houses.
I quite like the Victorian/Edwardian approach. They laid out areas, built train lines, roads, sewers, gas mains, school & hospitals. Then sold the plots of land to be developed - often by one side of a street.
Seems to have worked pretty well. If we could capture the heat of the anger of those who scream about "why do the shit scum love Edwardian houses instead of Proper Modern Planning And Construction?" we could solve the energy crisis overnight.
That was how the suburb I lived in Atlanta as a child was done. School was open as soon as the first house was built.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the main focus of UK governments should be on reducing our level of inequality not on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
Just to clarify: you would rather everyone was worse off as long as the rich lost most than that everyone was better off than better off if the rich were to gain most?
That doesn't follow. My point is governments can impact wealth distribution more than they can wealth creation. Also we need to get used to lower trend growth from now on. This will be less of a problem if the wealth we do have as a country - which is rather a lot - is shared more equally. If we don't find a way of doing this it will condemn many millions of people to increasingly perilous financial circumstances.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Developers under s106 should fund extra infrastructure, not least because there will be a delay until new residents start paying council tax while the pressures from development, including on the roads and then public services will happen once the project starts and as soon as they move in
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
Quite right too, if all your neighbours double the size of their properties and end your right to light and knock down trees which fall into your back garden what is the problem?
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the main focus of UK governments should be on reducing our level of inequality not on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
Just to clarify: you would rather everyone was worse off as long as the rich lost most than that everyone was better off than better off if the rich were to gain most?
That doesn't follow. My point is governments can impact wealth distribution more than they can wealth creation. Also we need to get used to lower trend growth now. This will be less of a problem if the wealth we do have as a country - which is rather a lot - is shared more equally. If we don't find a way of doing this it will condemn many millions of people to increasingly perilous financial circumstances.
Wealth redistribution heavily damages wealth creation. If you penalise the enterprising and successful and give money to the feckless and incompetent, guess what, you'll have more of the latter and less of the former.
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the focus of UK governments should be more on reducing our level of inequality than on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
I agree that those at the bottom should be able to live a life of dignity on the fruit of their labour. I don't care if inequality remains as it is now as long as the bottom most can goto work in the knowledge it pays them enough to have shelter, food, warmth with some left over for some of the nicer things in life...a good meal out, a holiday etc.
I do not think the two are the same thing.
To achieve a significant increase in the living standards of the lower quartile without a significant decrease in inequality requires a level of sustainable economic growth that is looking increasingly improbable. So like it or not with your views you should be a warrior against inequality. There'll be a warm welcome when you realize this. And I'll save you a seat.
It may well be the case that inequality would decrease to level up the bottom of the pile. The difference between us is I don't care either way and it would just be a side effect whereas for you I get the impression that the change in inequality is the main thing you want more than the levelling up the bottom and that if the bottom did get to the happy state I described but inequality remain unchanged you would still be unhappy.
This is the problem of the left....you are fighting human nature.
If you say "I think the bottom half of the population needs improvements in pay and living standards" few on the right would disagree with you.
When you say "I think the bottom half of the population needs improvements in pay and living standards and you need to become poorer with worse living standards" most of the "you" is going to be going nah don't fancy that. You need to sell an idea of how to get there rather than just the we will take your money to pay for it. That is exactly what in work benefits are and they are demoralising because what you are saying to someone is "you aren't worth enough as a worker to make a comfortable wage"
Sell an idea that people can get behind such as proper training which can be accessed by those on working tax credits. Examples might be a plumbing course, fork lift driving,electricians course, lorry driving, how to run a business and many more and say yes initially its going to cost the tax payer but as people uplift their skills they will pay more tax and gradually the tax burden will spread over more shoulders and we can bit by bit pay less as time passes.
Take from the rich to give to the poor may have been a great slogan for Robin Hood but he wasn't running to be prime minister
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the main focus of UK governments should be on reducing our level of inequality not on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
Just to clarify: you would rather everyone was worse off as long as the rich lost most than that everyone was better off than better off if the rich were to gain most?
That doesn't follow. My point is governments can impact wealth distribution more than they can wealth creation. Also we need to get used to lower trend growth now. This will be less of a problem if the wealth we do have as a country - which is rather a lot - is shared more equally. If we don't find a way of doing this it will condemn many millions of people to increasingly perilous financial circumstances.
Wealth redistribution heavily damages wealth creation. If you penalise the enterprising and successful and give money to the feckless and incompetent, guess what, you'll have more of the latter and less of the former.
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
And yet, Britain’s neighbours are both more equal *and* richer.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has. This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations. However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes. Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill. A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has. This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
st the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations. However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do
I spent a total of
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers)
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
That's what s106 contributions provide for. It doesn't stop complaints (in fairness developers weasel out of things like community facilities), and they even object to schemes to get vital infrastructure done in advance, which the government has attempted to fund to address a key criticism such as major roadworks only being built after most houses are done.
I don't class people with those type of concerns as NIMBYs. Its those who persist even if those points are addressed who are NIMBYs. They are easy to spot - no evidence is ever enough, there is never enough consultation etc.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Again, unlike you.
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
"Who sets the duty"?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer typically sets duty rates, in the elected Parliament. "The local community" shouldn't have a say whatsoever in that.
The number of pupils who need to go to school has the square root of bugger all to do with the number of houses that exist. The number of pupils who need to go to school is due to the number of children that exist, and those children exist whether they have a family home of their own or not.
It is not unusual now, due to our shortage in housing, to have young families having to cohabitate either with other families or with elderly relatives rather than having a home of their own. Those children still go to school. If a new home is built nearby within the same school catchment area that enables that young family to move out of the children's grandparents home and the family can have a home of their own instead, while continuing to send the kids to the same school, then does the number of pupils the school has (A) Go Up because of the new house, or (B) Stay the same?
Schooling should come from the education budget and respond to demographic changes, it has next to nothing to do with housing let alone that horrid word "planning". Children aren't "planned" by the state.
And I'm not tilting at windmills, nowhere near enough homes are being built. Dramatically more should be. If you think that what is happening is enough, then you are delusional.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
What is the point in being "anti" something which has already happened?
What's the point of being "pro" something that's shit?
No answer, then.
I literally answered your question. Being for or against things rather than simply accepting everything as it is is surely the essence of politics. I'm surprised that this needs spelling out to someone who contributes BTL on a political blog!
No, you really didn't. Asking a different (albeit related) question is not answering the question!
The point is: defining yourself as still being "for" or "against" something that has already happened is pointless, and detracts from where you should be, which is being "for" something that can be done in future to improve things. "I wouldn't start from here" is a waste of time.
Okay, I am against Brexit and would like to see its negative effects ameliorated in the short term. In the long run I would like to see it reversed. Is that alright?
No, because you're still wasting time being "against" something that has already happened.
"I am against Brexit" is silly.
So what do you make of people who say they are "against multiculturalism" then?
Least Brexit is a concrete single event that can be undone.
No, it's not - the status quo ante is no longer available.
A pure exact "status quo ante" is never available.
But which SQA is more available - the Brexit or the Multiculturalism one?
Most British new build is banal, subtopian sprawl. Sometimes, such as when tower blocks are built overlooking railway lines, it appears that the idea is to deliberately create slums.
British people don’t like development because they quite rightly fear what development looks like in the UK.
Nigel Farage says Labour have adopted UKIP 2015 Manifesto and are to the right of the Tories on immigration
SKS fans please explain
Should help Labour in the redwall but Farage clearly stirring, may go down less well in urban Labour areas but they are safe for the reds anyway even if some now go Green.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
There are tremendous externalities to new houses.
I quite like the Victorian/Edwardian approach. They laid out areas, built train lines, roads, sewers, gas mains, school & hospitals. Then sold the plots of land to be developed - often by one side of a street.
Seems to have worked pretty well. If we could capture the heat of the anger of those who scream about "why do the shit scum love Edwardian houses instead of Proper Modern Planning And Construction?" we could solve the energy crisis overnight.
There's a great deal to be said for that approach: build the services and let people build more or less what they want on the plots.
In a way, the former has been done on the new development next to us (Cambourne West): the initial work was to create all the major roads and services throughout the development, including (to my surprise) bus stops (with shelters) and streetlights. Lights that remain on all night...
The developers then come along and build sections at a time, with subsidiary roads off the major roads. Under your model, instead of the big developers building large chunks at a time, me or thee would be able to build.
The problem is that it costs an absolute fortune to get to the serviced land stage. A massive investment that may not pay off.
There is a model there; a few houses have recently been built in the next-door village on the 'serviced land' model. The problem is that they are all very expensive houses. Ones I would not buy due to the close proximity of a large and smelly pig farm...
Wealth redistribution heavily damages wealth creation. If you penalise the enterprising and successful and give money to the feckless and incompetent, guess what, you'll have more of the latter and less of the former.
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
This appears not to be correct, in various ways:
1. Factually, wealth distribution up to a point is universal throughout the western world through income tax, inheritance tax and other progressive taxation. 2. Pragmatically, notably prosperous societies such as Scandinavia are associated with unusually high level of redistributive taxation. Arguably this is balanced by excellent public services and education in particular, making it easier to bring high-performers forward. 3. Philosophically, most successful people accept that there is a significant element of luck in their success, and don't object in principle to sharing some of the proceeds to help others who have been less lucky. The suggestion that less successful people are all feckless and incompetent (or indeed that all successful people are hard-working and competent) does not survive a passing glance at the world.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
Most British new build is banal, subtopian sprawl. Sometimes, such as when tower blocks are built overlooking railway lines, it appears that the idea is to deliberately create slums.
British people don’t like development because they quite rightly fear what development looks like in the UK.
Come here to Cambourne, and I'll show you a new development that's probably got it 90% right, in terms of building a community.
Or perhaps Love Farm in St Neots is another example.
Most British new build is banal, subtopian sprawl. Sometimes, such as when tower blocks are built overlooking railway lines, it appears that the idea is to deliberately create slums.
British people don’t like development because they quite rightly fear what development looks like in the UK.
Come here to Cambourne, and I'll show you a new development that's probably got it 90% right, in terms of building a community.
Or perhaps Love Farm in St Neots is another example.
There is some. I think it’s better than it was. Personally I think Cambs is better off densifying Cambridge than extending every village around.
Well exactly. Do you think people in China are aware that the rest of the world has long since moved on? Barring a tiny handful of freakish continuity zerocovidians nobody in the west seems scared anymore.
This is what scares the Chinese leaders (graph from John Burn-Murdoch):
It shows the effect of having enough people scared of vaccines.
Omicron has made a big difference, and presumably it is one of its varieties in China. Miserable to have, and not without long covid type vascular problems, but rare to get the fatal lung features of original covid, so I think hospitals getting overwhelmed is less of an issue.
China is on a losing strategy. Omicron is essentially uncontrollable in terms of spread, though vaccines will further attenuate severity.
They would be better to forcibly vaccinating the oldies than trying to suppress something that is almost (if not actually ) unsuppressible.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
Quite right too, if all your neighbours double the size of their properties and end your right to light and knock down trees which fall into your back garden what is the problem?
If they double the size of their properties, on their land, then that's their prerogative. Its their land, not mine.
If they damage my property with a fallen down tree then they should pay compensation same as any other vandalism or negligence. If they cut down a tree that was on their property safely and securely without affecting mine, then what business has it to do with me?
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Again, unlike you.
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
"Who sets the duty"?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer typically sets duty rates, in the elected Parliament. "The local community" shouldn't have a say whatsoever in that.
The number of pupils who need to go to school has the square root of bugger all to do with the number of houses that exist. The number of pupils who need to go to school is due to the number of children that exist, and those children exist whether they have a family home of their own or not.
It is not unusual now, due to our shortage in housing, to have young families having to cohabitate either with other families or with elderly relatives rather than having a home of their own. Those children still go to school. If a new home is built nearby within the same school catchment area that enables that young family to move out of the children's grandparents home and the family can have a home of their own instead, while continuing to send the kids to the same school, then does the number of pupils the school has (A) Go Up because of the new house, or (B) Stay the same?
Schooling should come from the education budget and respond to demographic changes, it has next to nothing to do with housing let alone that horrid word "planning". Children aren't "planned" by the state.
And I'm not tilting at windmills, nowhere near enough homes are being built. Dramatically more should be. If you think that what is happening is enough, then you are delusional.
Plenty of homes are being built. The issue is affordability, not availability.
Look at your own area (wherever that is) and the planning applications and in-running developments on the council website. I would be interested to see what is there.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Again, unlike you.
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
"Who sets the duty"?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer typically sets duty rates, in the elected Parliament. "The local community" shouldn't have a say whatsoever in that.
The number of pupils who need to go to school has the square root of bugger all to do with the number of houses that exist. The number of pupils who need to go to school is due to the number of children that exist, and those children exist whether they have a family home of their own or not.
It is not unusual now, due to our shortage in housing, to have young families having to cohabitate either with other families or with elderly relatives rather than having a home of their own. Those children still go to school. If a new home is built nearby within the same school catchment area that enables that young family to move out of the children's grandparents home and the family can have a home of their own instead, while continuing to send the kids to the same school, then does the number of pupils the school has (A) Go Up because of the new house, or (B) Stay the same?
Schooling should come from the education budget and respond to demographic changes, it has next to nothing to do with housing let alone that horrid word "planning". Children aren't "planned" by the state.
And I'm not tilting at windmills, nowhere near enough homes are being built. Dramatically more should be. If you think that what is happening is enough, then you are delusional.
Plenty of homes are being built. The issue is affordability, not availability.
Look at your own area (wherever that is) and the planning applications and in-running developments on the council website. I would be interested to see what is there.
No, "plenty" of homes are not being built.
Some homes are being built, but not the 300-400k a year we'd need to begin to address the crippling housing shortage in this country.
Yes homes are being constructed, but the population is going up too. We need more homes every year just to stand still, let alone address the housing shortage.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
We've discussed this before. Brexit is done, its not dying on its arse. The future is up for grabs. Whether that is a much closer and better relationship with the EU (very desirable) or some nebulous Asian trading bloc (seems like a worse option). Brexit was leaving the political structures of the EU and stopping paying in money (and also to be fair receiving some of it back).
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
Quite right too, if all your neighbours double the size of their properties and end your right to light and knock down trees which fall into your back garden what is the problem?
If they double the size of their properties, on their land, then that's their prerogative. Its their land, not mine.
If they damage my property with a fallen down tree then they should pay compensation same as any other vandalism or negligence. If they cut down a tree that was on their property safely and securely without affecting mine, then what business has it to do with me?
And if you lose any right to light too as they completely overshadow your property? If they build right up to the fence so they can look directly into your windows? Both legal as they can do whatever they want to on their land
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Again, unlike you.
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
"Who sets the duty"?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer typically sets duty rates, in the elected Parliament. "The local community" shouldn't have a say whatsoever in that.
The number of pupils who need to go to school has the square root of bugger all to do with the number of houses that exist. The number of pupils who need to go to school is due to the number of children that exist, and those children exist whether they have a family home of their own or not.
It is not unusual now, due to our shortage in housing, to have young families having to cohabitate either with other families or with elderly relatives rather than having a home of their own. Those children still go to school. If a new home is built nearby within the same school catchment area that enables that young family to move out of the children's grandparents home and the family can have a home of their own instead, while continuing to send the kids to the same school, then does the number of pupils the school has (A) Go Up because of the new house, or (B) Stay the same?
Schooling should come from the education budget and respond to demographic changes, it has next to nothing to do with housing let alone that horrid word "planning". Children aren't "planned" by the state.
And I'm not tilting at windmills, nowhere near enough homes are being built. Dramatically more should be. If you think that what is happening is enough, then you are delusional.
Plenty of homes are being built. The issue is affordability, not availability.
Look at your own area (wherever that is) and the planning applications and in-running developments on the council website. I would be interested to see what is there.
No, "plenty" of homes are not being built.
Some homes are being built, but not the 300-400k a year we'd need to begin to address the crippling housing shortage in this country.
Yes homes are being constructed, but the population is going up too. We need more homes every year just to stand still, let alone address the housing shortage.
The other stats to look at are people per home and percentage of empty houses. Both suggest brutal supply constraints.
Also average home size. Britons live in tinier and tinier spaces, which is against the pattern you see when supply is not constrained.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the main focus of UK governments should be on reducing our level of inequality not on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
Just to clarify: you would rather everyone was worse off as long as the rich lost most than that everyone was better off than better off if the rich were to gain most?
That doesn't follow. My point is governments can impact wealth distribution more than they can wealth creation. Also we need to get used to lower trend growth now. This will be less of a problem if the wealth we do have as a country - which is rather a lot - is shared more equally. If we don't find a way of doing this it will condemn many millions of people to increasingly perilous financial circumstances.
Wealth redistribution heavily damages wealth creation. If you penalise the enterprising and successful and give money to the feckless and incompetent, guess what, you'll have more of the latter and less of the former.
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
And yet, Britain’s neighbours are both more equal *and* richer.
It’s a total head-scratcher.
[Citation Needed]
GDP per capita
United Kingdom 47,334.36 USD France 43,518.54 USD
Nigel Farage says Labour have adopted UKIP 2015 Manifesto and are to the right of the Tories on immigration
SKS fans please explain
Should help Labour in the redwall but Farage clearly stirring, may go down less well in urban Labour areas but they are safe for the reds anyway even if some now go Green.
Will concern Tory red wall MPs and the ERG though
Those who don't care how right wing SKS gets as long as he wins ie those without morals or principles will be pleased with your comments
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
Quite right too, if all your neighbours double the size of their properties and end your right to light and knock down trees which fall into your back garden what is the problem?
If they double the size of their properties, on their land, then that's their prerogative. Its their land, not mine.
If they damage my property with a fallen down tree then they should pay compensation same as any other vandalism or negligence. If they cut down a tree that was on their property safely and securely without affecting mine, then what business has it to do with me?
And if you lose any right to light too as they completely overshadow your property? If they build right up to the fence so they can look directly into your windows? Both legal as they can do whatever they want to on their land
So long as they meet any legal building standards, then yes, if its on their property, they should have carte blanche to do as they please without asking me or anyone else for permission.
Just as if a couple wants to have a child, they should be able to engage in coitus without asking neighbours for permission first, even though their act of coitus in their property in their land might have externalities on local schooling.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
We've discussed this before. Brexit is done, its not dying on its arse. The future is up for grabs. Whether that is a much closer and better relationship with the EU (very desirable) or some nebulous Asian trading bloc (seems like a worse option). Brexit was leaving the political structures of the EU and stopping paying in money (and also to be fair receiving some of it back).
You fail to recognise that Brexit (like Blairism or Thatcherism or Whateverism) is an ideological project.
As such, it is now only hanging together through a combination of inertia and various bed-blockers in the Tory shires.
And that deals with only the connection to a footpath on an existing development. Yet not having such detail could ruin an important part of the existing development...
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
We've discussed this before. Brexit is done, its not dying on its arse. The future is up for grabs. Whether that is a much closer and better relationship with the EU (very desirable) or some nebulous Asian trading bloc (seems like a worse option). Brexit was leaving the political structures of the EU and stopping paying in money (and also to be fair receiving some of it back).
You fail to recognise that Brexit (like Blairism or Thatcherism or Whateverism) is an ideological project.
As such, it is now only hanging together through a combination of inertia and various bed-blockers in the Tory shires.
The wave function is in advanced collapse.
I don't fail to accept it, I just think that Brexit is the leaving of the EU, which is done. Our future is not. You are describing the political grouping of Brexiteers, rather than Brexit itself. The Brexiteer movement is in trouble, but Brexit is done.
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the main focus of UK governments should be on reducing our level of inequality not on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
Just to clarify: you would rather everyone was worse off as long as the rich lost most than that everyone was better off than better off if the rich were to gain most?
That doesn't follow. My point is governments can impact wealth distribution more than they can wealth creation. Also we need to get used to lower trend growth now. This will be less of a problem if the wealth we do have as a country - which is rather a lot - is shared more equally. If we don't find a way of doing this it will condemn many millions of people to increasingly perilous financial circumstances.
Wealth redistribution heavily damages wealth creation. If you penalise the enterprising and successful and give money to the feckless and incompetent, guess what, you'll have more of the latter and less of the former.
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
And yet, Britain’s neighbours are both more equal *and* richer.
It’s a total head-scratcher.
[Citation Needed]
GDP per capita
United Kingdom 47,334.36 USD France 43,518.54 USD
I don’t know where this comes from, but judging from your posting history this is some selective crapola.
The OECD has France ahead by a decent margin, and in any case the relevant comparators should be
France Germany Netherlands Belgium Sweden Denmark
I would omit Ireland and Norway for different reasons.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
We've discussed this before. Brexit is done, its not dying on its arse. The future is up for grabs. Whether that is a much closer and better relationship with the EU (very desirable) or some nebulous Asian trading bloc (seems like a worse option). Brexit was leaving the political structures of the EU and stopping paying in money (and also to be fair receiving some of it back).
You fail to recognise that Brexit (like Blairism or Thatcherism or Whateverism) is an ideological project.
As such, it is now only hanging together through a combination of inertia and various bed-blockers in the Tory shires.
The wave function is in advanced collapse.
I don't fail to accept it, I just think that Brexit is the leaving of the EU, which is done. Our future is not. You are describing the political grouping of Brexiteers, rather than Brexit itself. The Brexiteer movement is in trouble, but Brexit is done.
The point is that Brexit itself is now reasonably likely to be reversed, because of the collapse of “Brexitism”.
I haven't taken the British government's management of the economy seriously since former TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding was put in charge of Covid "Test and Trace" by her pal Boris Johnson.
Now she's in charge of "improving the NHS". I wonder how she'll fare.
Before getting the Test and Trace job she was at Tesco, Sainsbury, and the Jockey Club, and got made a legislator for life by her other pal David Cameron.
TalkTalk, yes, TalkTalk - the notorious phone and broadband company.
It's basically jump in through the windows and see what you can rob before the house collapses time, isn't it, as it was in Russia in say 1990 to 1993?
A graphic from the Guardian to amplify the info in the header:
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
The other thing that is going on is that the government are now hell bent on totally destroying the property development industry. They have gone full on NIMBY, to try and save their electoral fortunes.
Two things to watch in the 'LURB' bill.
A government amendment for 'street votes'. So basically, instead of having the Council take a planning decision, it is decided instead by way of a referendum by people in the local area. So all the objectors can basically unite to vote down any proposal for development. The planning system gets replaced by direct democracy. This is actually likely to happen, it is going to probably become law.
Secondly, 46 tory backbenchers have backed an amendment that takes away housing targets, so Councils are under no actual obligation to build new housing. Something like this will happen given the level of support it has.
This is all absolutely psychotically stupid and insane. It is actually going to end the property development industry and all the jobs and economic growth it creates.
Would likely boost the Tories in the home counties and help them see off the threat from the LDs and Residents' Associations.
However removing major planning decisions from local authorities to direct referendum is probably going too far and would lead to most development projects and local plans being voted down
The second one won't get Labour support IMO so has little chance of passing. The first is a bit of bizarre populism. Is there a link to how it would work? If Mr Bloggs down the road wants a conservatory, do I get to vote on it? How close do I have to be that get a say? etc. Moreover, planning is not jjust an instinctive "Do I like the sound of that?" thing - it's a complex business requiring consideration of roads and other infrastructure as well as the impact on the surrounding area. I loathe endless debates about the precise angle of roofs and size of windows, and have stayed off the planning committees ever since I was elected to the council, but even I'd admit that someone with an eye for detail needs to grapple with the issue. It doesn't seem suitable for a yes/no vote on what folk down the road think.
I spent a total of 28 years on three different planning committees. The one common standard advice was never to listen to public opinion but always deal with the planning considerations. The new proposal seems to go directly against this.
Of course, public opinion has steered many a planning committee decision, but it least must be justified on the basis of material planning considerations and planning policies. Where they don't the decision is overturned and the council (and taxpayers) pay costs, so populist ignoring of policy is a bad idea. You can tell an unserious councillor if they ignore the possibility of an indefensible refusal getting overturned because 'democracy', even though it hurts their residents more.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
Its the worst possible policy. NIMBY scum shouldn't have a say on what anyone else does on their land, let alone be given more of a say.
When you rant on about NIMBY's you always forget the externalities. I don't have a problem with anyone building anywhere. Subject to the community if there are externalities, from utilities, to road access to sewage and even to schools, shops, medical.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
Because the externalities line is a bullshit excuse. Utter bullshit.
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
Again, unlike you.
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
"Who sets the duty"?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer typically sets duty rates, in the elected Parliament. "The local community" shouldn't have a say whatsoever in that.
The number of pupils who need to go to school has the square root of bugger all to do with the number of houses that exist. The number of pupils who need to go to school is due to the number of children that exist, and those children exist whether they have a family home of their own or not.
It is not unusual now, due to our shortage in housing, to have young families having to cohabitate either with other families or with elderly relatives rather than having a home of their own. Those children still go to school. If a new home is built nearby within the same school catchment area that enables that young family to move out of the children's grandparents home and the family can have a home of their own instead, while continuing to send the kids to the same school, then does the number of pupils the school has (A) Go Up because of the new house, or (B) Stay the same?
Schooling should come from the education budget and respond to demographic changes, it has next to nothing to do with housing let alone that horrid word "planning". Children aren't "planned" by the state.
And I'm not tilting at windmills, nowhere near enough homes are being built. Dramatically more should be. If you think that what is happening is enough, then you are delusional.
Plenty of homes are being built. The issue is affordability, not availability.
Look at your own area (wherever that is) and the planning applications and in-running developments on the council website. I would be interested to see what is there.
No, "plenty" of homes are not being built.
Some homes are being built, but not the 300-400k a year we'd need to begin to address the crippling housing shortage in this country.
Yes homes are being constructed, but the population is going up too. We need more homes every year just to stand still, let alone address the housing shortage.
What's happening with your local council. I assume that walking around you don't see any development but I would be interested to know what actually has been agreed or is in planning.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
We've discussed this before. Brexit is done, its not dying on its arse. The future is up for grabs. Whether that is a much closer and better relationship with the EU (very desirable) or some nebulous Asian trading bloc (seems like a worse option). Brexit was leaving the political structures of the EU and stopping paying in money (and also to be fair receiving some of it back).
You fail to recognise that Brexit (like Blairism or Thatcherism or Whateverism) is an ideological project.
As such, it is now only hanging together through a combination of inertia and various bed-blockers in the Tory shires.
The wave function is in advanced collapse.
I don't fail to accept it, I just think that Brexit is the leaving of the EU, which is done. Our future is not. You are describing the political grouping of Brexiteers, rather than Brexit itself. The Brexiteer movement is in trouble, but Brexit is done.
The point is that Brexit itself is now reasonably likely to be reversed, because of the collapse of “Brexitism”.
Reversed? As in full fat back into the EU? I'm not convinced. A poll asking 'do you think it was right or wrong to leave the EU?' is not the same as 'do you want to rejoin the EU (on new terms, with the Euro, no rebate etc)' I think we will end up a lot closer but not rejoin.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
We've discussed this before. Brexit is done, its not dying on its arse. The future is up for grabs. Whether that is a much closer and better relationship with the EU (very desirable) or some nebulous Asian trading bloc (seems like a worse option). Brexit was leaving the political structures of the EU and stopping paying in money (and also to be fair receiving some of it back).
You fail to recognise that Brexit (like Blairism or Thatcherism or Whateverism) is an ideological project.
As such, it is now only hanging together through a combination of inertia and various bed-blockers in the Tory shires.
The wave function is in advanced collapse.
This seems like a complete misunderstanding. It's like saying that New Zealand is an ideological project, and seeing any political difficulties as a sign that it will inevitably join the Federation of Australia as nature intended.
Comments
"Russian political talk shows should therefore be taken for what they are: propaganda pieces that serve to entertain, generate ratings, shape public opinion, and — perhaps most significantly of all — confound viewers.
The lack of consistency in Russian propaganda is arguably a feature rather than a bug. Providing multiple contradictory interpretations of the same event is a tactic deliberately used by the Kremlin to bewilder and paralyze the Russian public. While talk show narratives have typically been confined to domestic audiences in the past, the increased attention accorded them since the war began has — while extending their reach and growing their viewership — arguably also exaggerated their significance."
I found the following article fairly interesting for this:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/11/19/how-not-to-interpret-russian-political-talk-shows-a79399
Totalitarian dictatorship loses again.
As to misrepresenting methods sorry really not, they may not have a guy with a clipboard but numbers are based on sampling not counting which it should be. The home office has admitted this before. It has also been acknowledged that the numbers they claim don't tally with the number asking for settled status nor the number of ni numbers issued by quite large margins. I trust the homeoffice on anything immigration statistic related slightly less than I would trust Corbyn to support Israel
There was some quite racists propaganda, saying that Chinese people needed to take Chinese vaccines, because they are different. How much that was government directed is a question, but it put many people off the Western vaccines.
He has x jabs on the NHS, of course.
This is not an attack on you.
We have built a system that does the above.
We need a different way.
The government seems to be saying now they wouldn't overturn such matters. So free for all on poor decisions.
I've suggested that they try to have every variant of the vaccine; gotta get 'em all!
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/more-restrictions-in-beijing-after-record-covid-caseload-china-logs-253-000-cases-in-3-weeks-101669125189362.html
The vehicle is ready for the dump. It’s never going to pass its MOT.
https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1595029289501708289
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1595045428231372801/photo/1
https://twitter.com/notfamousvince/status/1594595375679160320?s=46&t=3PLRJp7VuaFq3E8kcRGwag
Skilled Worker visas, who does that cover? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-eligible-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-eligible-occupations-and-codes has a list. Included are such professions as aerobics instructor, secretary, farmer, groundsman, panel beater, coach painter, brick layer, knitter, butcher’s assistant, crèche assistant, stable hand, air hostess, and deckhand (on large fishing vessel). Some of these are pretty low paid jobs.
We may have “taken back control”, but what Conservative governments have decided to do with that control is to keep immigration for work high. If you want the labour supply to be restricted, Brexit hasn’t delivered that.
Numerous employers not getting staff and offering higher pay to try and get them.
Sky's @joepike explains why it is both "intriguing and significant".
Today's top stories: https://trib.al/Rx0iR33
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1595020255486775296/video/1
Man detained at Manston died on Saturday and a coroner investigation announced. By Monday gov't announces that nobody is being held at Manston.
This might, of course, be coincidence. Or it might be a proactive defence to a massive scandal they know is coming.
You forget all that. Which is unlike you.
That said, Brexit or no Brexit we need immigration so it is just a different flavour of immigration. Brexiters again can't stop bleating about why should the Indian sub-continent be disadvantated vs, say, Belgians, but the fact is that the UK is not in control of its need for immigration, no matter whether we are in or out of the EU.
I think a much more reliable test is simply: “did you vote for Brexit?”
https://twitter.com/yatesco/status/1594256764899303424?s=46&t=EsO8MUOCTXxkaBSDqHcUng
I have no problem with the former development; it was clear that the surrounding land was going to be developed (and there will be more developments in other surrounding areas).
The 260 homes does bother me: the land had been set aside for employment (e.g. offices), and is now going to be housing, meaning that we become even more of a dormitory for Cambridge. I'm dead-set against it, especially as the employment land in the former new development has also been reduced to cram in more houses.
I am also concerned that the new facilities we will be getting to deal with a near doubling of our population are sparse, to say the least. Facilities that are already overwhelmed will break. The pharmacy already has; the GP surgery has been a basketcase for years.
I am not against development, but I do want to ensure that idiots like the local council don't just chuck up houses without ensuring they create livable spaces and communities.
Does that make me a nimby? I've been called one, despite being one of those in favour of other developments...
Presumably you think 17 million people have low IQ's because they choose Brexit?
SKS fans please explain
How much of an externality to schooling is there for a single home being built and bought by a childless couple?
How much of an externality to schooling is it if an elderly widow dies in her home and it gets sold to a young family with three children?
Demographics change, its up to the Council to adapt. The way to handle externalities is through taxation, not planning.
If you wish to buy a packet of cigarettes you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that tobacco before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for the NHS.
If you wish to buy a tank of petrol you don't need to go through a planning committee to handle all the externalities for that fuel before you buy it, you buy it and pay the duty concerned. That duty amongst other things pays for roads, rails, schools and more.
If you think there's an externality to new homes then design a duty to cover the cost of that. A set fee that is payable that can then be spent accordingly on whatever priorities or demographic pressures the Council has. But if all taxes are paid, then there should not be any delays due to "externalities" any more than there is on anything else which has a duty.
It's utter rubbish.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Least Brexit is a concrete single event that can be undone.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_vs._Perú_(1978)
"design a duty to cover the cost of that"
Who sets the duty? An elected representative body I very much hope. Who elects the, er, elected representative body? Well it's the good old locals, or, in your terms, the NIMBYs. And if there is then a group elected that doesn't want new houses for which they will design a duty? Democracy in action.
And your single home being built and bought (what does that mean?) - if it is in the middle of a field they will have to plumb it in, supply it with power, etc, and who is responsible for and should have a say in that? Well the local community again.
And you are also tilting at windmills in the first place. The presumption in planning now is to grant first and ask precisely no questions later. Neighbourhood and Local Plans are being ignored and councils are sanctioning building just about everywhere.
So your phantom childless couple need not worry. Plenty of houses for them to move into.
Now - can they afford to buy that place? That is the real issue.
Everyone happy.
A community is much more than just housing.
(*) It was originally set up in 1997 as three independent villages, connected by a winding spine road, with green areas between them. It is now classed as a town, but almost everyone calls it a 'village'
China is on a losing strategy. Omicron is essentially uncontrollable in terms of spread, though vaccines will further attenuate severity.
I quite like the Victorian/Edwardian approach. They laid out areas, built train lines, roads, sewers, gas mains, school & hospitals. Then sold the plots of land to be developed - often by one side of a street.
Seems to have worked pretty well. If we could capture the heat of the anger of those who scream about "why do the shit scum love Edwardian houses instead of Proper Modern Planning And Construction?" we could solve the energy crisis overnight.
- GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters
- GPT-4 supposedly has 100 trillion parameters
It is March 11, 2015. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1228378915388915718
It is October 14, 2016. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1228378988210524162
It is June 27, 2017. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1228379064370696200
It is August 13, 2018. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1228379157639389189
It is May 31, 2019. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1228379254913675270
It is February 13, 2020. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1228379334173511682
It is November 21, 2022. I am watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1595045790610759680
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
This is the problem of the left....you are fighting human nature.
If you say "I think the bottom half of the population needs improvements in pay and living standards" few on the right would disagree with you.
When you say "I think the bottom half of the population needs improvements in pay and living standards and you need to become poorer with worse living standards" most of the "you" is going to be going nah don't fancy that. You need to sell an idea of how to get there rather than just the we will take your money to pay for it. That is exactly what in work benefits are and they are demoralising because what you are saying to someone is "you aren't worth enough as a worker to make a comfortable wage"
Sell an idea that people can get behind such as proper training which can be accessed by those on working tax credits. Examples might be a plumbing course, fork lift driving,electricians course, lorry driving, how to run a business and many more and say yes initially its going to cost the tax payer but as people uplift their skills they will pay more tax and gradually the tax burden will spread over more shoulders and we can bit by bit pay less as time passes.
Take from the rich to give to the poor may have been a great slogan for Robin Hood but he wasn't running to be prime minister
It’s a total head-scratcher.
after most houses are done.
I don't class people with those type of concerns as NIMBYs. Its those who persist even if those points are addressed who are NIMBYs. They are easy to spot - no evidence is ever enough, there is never enough consultation etc.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer typically sets duty rates, in the elected Parliament. "The local community" shouldn't have a say whatsoever in that.
The number of pupils who need to go to school has the square root of bugger all to do with the number of houses that exist. The number of pupils who need to go to school is due to the number of children that exist, and those children exist whether they have a family home of their own or not.
It is not unusual now, due to our shortage in housing, to have young families having to cohabitate either with other families or with elderly relatives rather than having a home of their own. Those children still go to school. If a new home is built nearby within the same school catchment area that enables that young family to move out of the children's grandparents home and the family can have a home of their own instead, while continuing to send the kids to the same school, then does the number of pupils the school has (A) Go Up because of the new house, or (B) Stay the same?
Schooling should come from the education budget and respond to demographic changes, it has next to nothing to do with housing let alone that horrid word "planning". Children aren't "planned" by the state.
And I'm not tilting at windmills, nowhere near enough homes are being built. Dramatically more should be. If you think that what is happening is enough, then you are delusional.
But which SQA is more available - the Brexit or the Multiculturalism one?
British people don’t like development because they quite rightly fear what development looks like in the UK.
Will concern Tory redwall MPs and the ERG though
LOL, no penalty. The inconsistency of referees in this tournament.
As is Nigel Farage
In a way, the former has been done on the new development next to us (Cambourne West): the initial work was to create all the major roads and services throughout the development, including (to my surprise) bus stops (with shelters) and streetlights. Lights that remain on all night...
The developers then come along and build sections at a time, with subsidiary roads off the major roads. Under your model, instead of the big developers building large chunks at a time, me or thee would be able to build.
The problem is that it costs an absolute fortune to get to the serviced land stage. A massive investment that may not pay off.
There is a model there; a few houses have recently been built in the next-door village on the 'serviced land' model. The problem is that they are all very expensive houses. Ones I would not buy due to the close proximity of a large and smelly pig farm...
If not you are deflecting
1. Factually, wealth distribution up to a point is universal throughout the western world through income tax, inheritance tax and other progressive taxation.
2. Pragmatically, notably prosperous societies such as Scandinavia are associated with unusually high level of redistributive taxation. Arguably this is balanced by excellent public services and education in particular, making it easier to bring high-performers forward.
3. Philosophically, most successful people accept that there is a significant element of luck in their success, and don't object in principle to sharing some of the proceeds to help others who have been less lucky. The suggestion that less successful people are all feckless and incompetent (or indeed that all successful people are hard-working and competent) does not survive a passing glance at the world.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
Or perhaps Love Farm in St Neots is another example.
I'm in the BANANA camp, mind.
Personally I think Cambs is better off densifying Cambridge than extending every village around.
If they damage my property with a fallen down tree then they should pay compensation same as any other vandalism or negligence. If they cut down a tree that was on their property safely and securely without affecting mine, then what business has it to do with me?
Look at your own area (wherever that is) and the planning applications and in-running developments on the council website. I would be interested to see what is there.
Some homes are being built, but not the 300-400k a year we'd need to begin to address the crippling housing shortage in this country.
Yes homes are being constructed, but the population is going up too. We need more homes every year just to stand still, let alone address the housing shortage.
Also average home size. Britons live in tinier and tinier spaces, which is against the pattern you see when supply is not constrained.
GDP per capita
United Kingdom 47,334.36 USD
France 43,518.54 USD
Just as if a couple wants to have a child, they should be able to engage in coitus without asking neighbours for permission first, even though their act of coitus in their property in their land might have externalities on local schooling.
As such, it is now only hanging together through a combination of inertia and various bed-blockers in the Tory shires.
The wave function is in advanced collapse.
GPT3 was already scary
And this is an order of magnitude bigger?
Brace
https://www.ourlovesfarm.co.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=319635
And that deals with only the connection to a footpath on an existing development. Yet not having such detail could ruin an important part of the existing development...
The OECD has France ahead by a decent margin, and in any case the relevant comparators should be
France
Germany
Netherlands
Belgium
Sweden
Denmark
I would omit Ireland and Norway for different reasons.
Now she's in charge of "improving the NHS". I wonder how she'll fare.
Before getting the Test and Trace job she was at Tesco, Sainsbury, and the Jockey Club, and got made a legislator for life by her other pal David Cameron.
TalkTalk, yes, TalkTalk - the notorious phone and broadband company.
It's basically jump in through the windows and see what you can rob before the house collapses time, isn't it, as it was in Russia in say 1990 to 1993?
A graphic from the Guardian to amplify the info in the header: