Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
It's a great article. Shocking though.
I don't disagree with your comment: 'Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties' ...but it's a sad indictment of New Labour.
The real reason, rather than Iraq, for the young's aversion to Tony Blair?
All of this is just symptoms of the scarcity of property. If the market wasn't undersupplied, then the shit properties would stand empty. The prices would be affordable. New properties would be larger than postage stamps.
All this is seen in parts of the world where enforced property scarcity isn't a problem.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
It's a great article. Shocking though.
I don't disagree with your comment: 'Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties' ...but it's a sad indictment of New Labour.
The real reason, rather than Iraq, for the young's aversion to Tony Blair?
Most 20-somethings won't remember Blair now.
30-somethings do, though. The London rental market is a result of Labour's policies and Tory neglect. Lots of us in our 30s and 40s loathe Blair for multiple reasons, housing is definitely one of them.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
I think a lot of families are solvent but with no contingency, then one thing goes wrong and they're in trouble.
Illness is the most usual trigger, not a death, in my experience. Fluctuating energy costs don't help either.
I've also seen a few examples recently where the DWP have stopped UC or other benefit payments for no valid reason. The family will end up getting the payments back-paid but in the meantime, they are up sh*t-creek. What do they stop paying for: food? rent? fuel? council tax?
I said barring the unfortunate 1 or 2%.....most people earning in the 30k to 40k mark that are using food banks are doing so because they are living above their means either by not moving somewhere cheaper to rent or by having addictions to feed whether scratchcards, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. Many times in my life rent has risen to a point I cant pay it and pay everything else....each time I moved somewhere cheaper so I could afford. They should do the same
Where is the evidence that any significant number of people earning 30 to 40k are using foodbanks ? I will consult some of my friends on the Trussell Trust but I very much doubt it.
Why then do we keep getting sob stories about poor nurses using foodbanks in the guardian about nurses having to use food banks. Most nurses are on 30k plus...maybe it is unusual so blame the gaurdian for making it sound usual
Rent is eating huge percentages of peoples wages in some areas. Strangely correlated to the shortages of the staff in those areas, in various categories.
It's almost as if big rents make it expensive to live there or something.
Yes it is and not denying that till recently I lived in the south east and kept having to move to cheaper to make the numbers work so know how it goes. However that doesnt mean I should have to pay more tax so others should be able to keep living somewhere they cant afford
Well, damn those nurses in London for trying to do nursing in London. And those silly teachers.
In Victorian times, they would have said fuck this and built another 20 miles square of London.
Now we have the houses they built for the *poorer class of labourer* changing hands for £1.5 million.
How is this my problem? My office is in central london....I cant afford to live in london so had to commute. Why is it ok to pick my pocket to pay someone who works in the same area more so they can afford to live where I cant
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
It's a great article. Shocking though.
I don't disagree with your comment: 'Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties' ...but it's a sad indictment of New Labour.
The real reason, rather than Iraq, for the young's aversion to Tony Blair?
Most 20-somethings won't remember Blair now.
30-somethings do, though. The London rental market is a result of Labour's policies and Tory neglect. Lots of us in our 30s and 40s loathe Blair for multiple reasons, housing is definitely one of them.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
Fab. So you sack the nurses. With whom do you replace them? We need nurses, and you can't just hire someone else like you could if you were Tesco.
So what are you suggesting we keep upping the pay of nurses till we stop having their sob stories....no
Another Tory who doesn’t understand elementary economics.
Look up the words supply, demand, price and market. Any introductory textbook will try to explain in such a fashion that even the dim-witted will get the gist.
The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
Anyone serious about tackling the issue would have to accept that house prices need to stagnate for a couple of decades, if not fall, in order to get back to historical levels of affordability. No mainstream party will support that, as it would turn off essentially every homeowning voter, even if in the long term it would be good for the country.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse. Just considering the squeeling we have recently seen about what are modest interest rate rises and their effect on mortgages, no way is Starmer about to blow up the housing market.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
Fab. So you sack the nurses. With whom do you replace them? We need nurses, and you can't just hire someone else like you could if you were Tesco.
So what are you suggesting we keep upping the pay of nurses till we stop having their sob stories....no
Another Tory who doesn’t understand elementary economics.
Look up the words supply, demand, price and market. Any introductory textbook will try to explain in such a fashion that even the dim-witted will get the gist.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
I think a lot of families are solvent but with no contingency, then one thing goes wrong and they're in trouble.
Illness is the most usual trigger, not a death, in my experience. Fluctuating energy costs don't help either.
I've also seen a few examples recently where the DWP have stopped UC or other benefit payments for no valid reason. The family will end up getting the payments back-paid but in the meantime, they are up sh*t-creek. What do they stop paying for: food? rent? fuel? council tax?
I said barring the unfortunate 1 or 2%.....most people earning in the 30k to 40k mark that are using food banks are doing so because they are living above their means either by not moving somewhere cheaper to rent or by having addictions to feed whether scratchcards, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. Many times in my life rent has risen to a point I cant pay it and pay everything else....each time I moved somewhere cheaper so I could afford. They should do the same
Where is the evidence that any significant number of people earning 30 to 40k are using foodbanks ? I will consult some of my friends on the Trussell Trust but I very much doubt it.
Why then do we keep getting sob stories about poor nurses using foodbanks in the guardian about nurses having to use food banks. Most nurses are on 30k plus...maybe it is unusual so blame the gaurdian for making it sound usual
Rent is eating huge percentages of peoples wages in some areas. Strangely correlated to the shortages of the staff in those areas, in various categories.
It's almost as if big rents make it expensive to live there or something.
Yes it is and not denying that till recently I lived in the south east and kept having to move to cheaper to make the numbers work so know how it goes. However that doesnt mean I should have to pay more tax so others should be able to keep living somewhere they cant afford
Well, damn those nurses in London for trying to do nursing in London. And those silly teachers.
In Victorian times, they would have said fuck this and built another 20 miles square of London.
Now we have the houses they built for the *poorer class of labourer* changing hands for £1.5 million.
How is this my problem? My office is in central london....I cant afford to live in london so had to commute. Why is it ok to pick my pocket to pay someone who works in the same area more so they can afford to live where I cant
Many of the nurses working in London are commuting long distances as well. It's not as if 2 hours out of London, you can buy a mansion for 50p or something.
When I looked at Marden in Kent, buying some agricultural land as a bet... One single house on 35 acres in (say) 20 years would have made me my investment back. With a nice profit. More would make me a millionaire, very rapidly.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
As @FrankBooth said, more than half the country support bringing back the death penalty yet it is a view that, if you listened to the current orthodoxy, is very much a minority held opinion. I think you'll find there a lot of people out there who may not publicly express their views but are of a similar mindset.
No one is denying a capital punishment referendum would assist RedWall Conservatives and the tough on crime Conservatives in general. My point is Anderson is flying a kite for the party hierarchy. Such a policy platform is the last resort of scoundrels, but if winning is the only requirement why not?
Demanding that Ian Huntley deserves the ultimate sanction is an easy win, and anyone denying the ultimate sanction is appropriate for Ian Huntley can be cast as soft on crime.
I don't have a particular view on capital punishment, apart from noting that the US States with it have higher murder rates than those without, suggesting its deterrent effect is not true.
I do wonder how many would actually switch party because of it. More likely it helps shore up a rapidly eroding core vote, on both sides.
It strikes me as the last roll of the dice by a cynical political organisation whose only raison d'etre seems to be winning power at all costs.
I don't want Judith Ward, the Guildford 4 and the Birmingham 6 executed by the state on my behalf. A posthumous apology doesn't cut it for me.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
It's a great article. Shocking though.
I don't disagree with your comment: 'Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties' ...but it's a sad indictment of New Labour.
The real reason, rather than Iraq, for the young's aversion to Tony Blair?
Most 20-somethings won't remember Blair now.
30-somethings do, though. The London rental market is a result of Labour's policies and Tory neglect. Lots of us in our 30s and 40s loathe Blair for multiple reasons, housing is definitely one of them.
You're not renting though are you Max.
No, I'm not. I did for 7 years though, I think I worked out that I spent about £80k on rent during that 7 years. I am extremely lucky that I work in an industry which has very high salaries and that my wife is too. Most people aren't in my situation though.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
I think a lot of families are solvent but with no contingency, then one thing goes wrong and they're in trouble.
Illness is the most usual trigger, not a death, in my experience. Fluctuating energy costs don't help either.
I've also seen a few examples recently where the DWP have stopped UC or other benefit payments for no valid reason. The family will end up getting the payments back-paid but in the meantime, they are up sh*t-creek. What do they stop paying for: food? rent? fuel? council tax?
I said barring the unfortunate 1 or 2%.....most people earning in the 30k to 40k mark that are using food banks are doing so because they are living above their means either by not moving somewhere cheaper to rent or by having addictions to feed whether scratchcards, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. Many times in my life rent has risen to a point I cant pay it and pay everything else....each time I moved somewhere cheaper so I could afford. They should do the same
Where is the evidence that any significant number of people earning 30 to 40k are using foodbanks ? I will consult some of my friends on the Trussell Trust but I very much doubt it.
Why then do we keep getting sob stories about poor nurses using foodbanks in the guardian about nurses having to use food banks. Most nurses are on 30k plus...maybe it is unusual so blame the gaurdian for making it sound usual
Rent is eating huge percentages of peoples wages in some areas. Strangely correlated to the shortages of the staff in those areas, in various categories.
It's almost as if big rents make it expensive to live there or something.
Yes it is and not denying that till recently I lived in the south east and kept having to move to cheaper to make the numbers work so know how it goes. However that doesnt mean I should have to pay more tax so others should be able to keep living somewhere they cant afford
Well, damn those nurses in London for trying to do nursing in London. And those silly teachers.
In Victorian times, they would have said fuck this and built another 20 miles square of London.
Now we have the houses they built for the *poorer class of labourer* changing hands for £1.5 million.
How is this my problem? My office is in central london....I cant afford to live in london so had to commute. Why is it ok to pick my pocket to pay someone who works in the same area more so they can afford to live where I cant
Many of the nurses working in London are commuting long distances as well. It's not as if 2 hours out of London, you can buy a mansion for 50p or something.
When I looked at Marden in Kent, buying some agricultural land as a bet... One single house on 35 acres in (say) 20 years would have made me my investment back. With a nice profit. More would make me a millionaire, very rapidly.
I didn't say they weren't my point is so are a lot of workers in London but you dont see articles about us and our gruelling commutes in the left wing rags like the guardian
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
The government (or the next one) will need to think on this
If you are 100% against more places for people to sleep then you are 100% against population increase.
Whining about brownfield or empty flats in London owned by Chinese or whatever is bullshit. There are 2 possible policies.
1) Build hundreds of thousands of more homes. Every fucking year. For generations. Until the backlog is dealt with. 2) Build a wall round the UK and have negative population change.
Pick one.
If you don't build the homes, then you are racist - not building them means that the more recent population (more non-white) will have access to worse and more expensive housing stock. This is institutionally racist. By definition.
If you build a wall round the country, then you are simply racist.
Wrong. Nothing racist about walling off the country provided you don't selectively let people through
Oh yeah - building walls is *never* about keeping people out. No sir.
Just the kind of people who go round wearing loud shirts in built up areas?
You what? Absolutely it is about keeping people out. I lock all the doors of my house every night because I don't want anyone coming in. Does that make me racist?
The country isn't your property. It isn't even King Charles' property...
It is collectively our property
If it isn't we have no business not having entirely open borders. That the plan?
The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
Anyone serious about tackling the issue would have to accept that house prices need to stagnate for a couple of decades, if not fall, in order to get back to historical levels of affordability. No mainstream party will support that, as it would turn off essentially every homeowning voter, even if in the long term it would be good for the country.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse.
You just rip the plaster off. There's no other way of doing it. Millions (myself included) will "lose" property wealth but since I'm not going to sell it makes little difference.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
I think a lot of families are solvent but with no contingency, then one thing goes wrong and they're in trouble.
Illness is the most usual trigger, not a death, in my experience. Fluctuating energy costs don't help either.
I've also seen a few examples recently where the DWP have stopped UC or other benefit payments for no valid reason. The family will end up getting the payments back-paid but in the meantime, they are up sh*t-creek. What do they stop paying for: food? rent? fuel? council tax?
I said barring the unfortunate 1 or 2%.....most people earning in the 30k to 40k mark that are using food banks are doing so because they are living above their means either by not moving somewhere cheaper to rent or by having addictions to feed whether scratchcards, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. Many times in my life rent has risen to a point I cant pay it and pay everything else....each time I moved somewhere cheaper so I could afford. They should do the same
Where is the evidence that any significant number of people earning 30 to 40k are using foodbanks ? I will consult some of my friends on the Trussell Trust but I very much doubt it.
Why then do we keep getting sob stories about poor nurses using foodbanks in the guardian about nurses having to use food banks. Most nurses are on 30k plus...maybe it is unusual so blame the gaurdian for making it sound usual
Rent is eating huge percentages of peoples wages in some areas. Strangely correlated to the shortages of the staff in those areas, in various categories.
It's almost as if big rents make it expensive to live there or something.
Yes it is and not denying that till recently I lived in the south east and kept having to move to cheaper to make the numbers work so know how it goes. However that doesnt mean I should have to pay more tax so others should be able to keep living somewhere they cant afford
Well, damn those nurses in London for trying to do nursing in London. And those silly teachers.
In Victorian times, they would have said fuck this and built another 20 miles square of London.
Now we have the houses they built for the *poorer class of labourer* changing hands for £1.5 million.
How is this my problem? My office is in central london....I cant afford to live in london so had to commute. Why is it ok to pick my pocket to pay someone who works in the same area more so they can afford to live where I cant
Many of the nurses working in London are commuting long distances as well. It's not as if 2 hours out of London, you can buy a mansion for 50p or something.
When I looked at Marden in Kent, buying some agricultural land as a bet... One single house on 35 acres in (say) 20 years would have made me my investment back. With a nice profit. More would make me a millionaire, very rapidly.
I didn't say they weren't my point is so are a lot of workers in London but you dont see articles about us and our gruelling commutes in the left wing rags like the guardian
Among other things, your wages aren't held down by national wage deals.
The Victorians saw house prices increasing and thought "Idea!"
And built vast areas of suburbs to sell to the aspiring. Which held house prices down by making some fucking houses available.
The modern housing market resembles the end of one of those movies where the hero and the villain are fighting in a burning airplane (or whatever). Maybe stop fighting and land somewhere with space, first?
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
As a 60+ myself (though not a landlord), I can't disagree with you.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
Fab. So you sack the nurses. With whom do you replace them? We need nurses, and you can't just hire someone else like you could if you were Tesco.
So what are you suggesting we keep upping the pay of nurses till we stop having their sob stories....no
Another Tory who doesn’t understand elementary economics.
Look up the words supply, demand, price and market. Any introductory textbook will try to explain in such a fashion that even the dim-witted will get the gist.
I am neither a tory or a faux scot
Your profound ignorance and nastiness naturally led me to assume you were a Tory. What are you then? DUP, UKIP, BNP, Orange Order or some other scumbag outfit?
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
I think a lot of families are solvent but with no contingency, then one thing goes wrong and they're in trouble.
Illness is the most usual trigger, not a death, in my experience. Fluctuating energy costs don't help either.
I've also seen a few examples recently where the DWP have stopped UC or other benefit payments for no valid reason. The family will end up getting the payments back-paid but in the meantime, they are up sh*t-creek. What do they stop paying for: food? rent? fuel? council tax?
I said barring the unfortunate 1 or 2%.....most people earning in the 30k to 40k mark that are using food banks are doing so because they are living above their means either by not moving somewhere cheaper to rent or by having addictions to feed whether scratchcards, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. Many times in my life rent has risen to a point I cant pay it and pay everything else....each time I moved somewhere cheaper so I could afford. They should do the same
Where is the evidence that any significant number of people earning 30 to 40k are using foodbanks ? I will consult some of my friends on the Trussell Trust but I very much doubt it.
Why then do we keep getting sob stories about poor nurses using foodbanks in the guardian about nurses having to use food banks. Most nurses are on 30k plus...maybe it is unusual so blame the gaurdian for making it sound usual
Rent is eating huge percentages of peoples wages in some areas. Strangely correlated to the shortages of the staff in those areas, in various categories.
It's almost as if big rents make it expensive to live there or something.
Yes it is and not denying that till recently I lived in the south east and kept having to move to cheaper to make the numbers work so know how it goes. However that doesnt mean I should have to pay more tax so others should be able to keep living somewhere they cant afford
Well, damn those nurses in London for trying to do nursing in London. And those silly teachers.
In Victorian times, they would have said fuck this and built another 20 miles square of London.
Now we have the houses they built for the *poorer class of labourer* changing hands for £1.5 million.
How is this my problem? My office is in central london....I cant afford to live in london so had to commute. Why is it ok to pick my pocket to pay someone who works in the same area more so they can afford to live where I cant
Many of the nurses working in London are commuting long distances as well. It's not as if 2 hours out of London, you can buy a mansion for 50p or something.
When I looked at Marden in Kent, buying some agricultural land as a bet... One single house on 35 acres in (say) 20 years would have made me my investment back. With a nice profit. More would make me a millionaire, very rapidly.
I didn't say they weren't my point is so are a lot of workers in London but you dont see articles about us and our gruelling commutes in the left wing rags like the guardian
Among other things, your wages aren't held down by national wage deals.
Among other things most private sector staff have had less payrises that the public sector. Often heard the comment why are they complaining about a mere 1% when we got sod all we also dont generally get yearly increments due to seniority nor a 20% pension contribution
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
Fab. So you sack the nurses. With whom do you replace them? We need nurses, and you can't just hire someone else like you could if you were Tesco.
So what are you suggesting we keep upping the pay of nurses till we stop having their sob stories....no
Another Tory who doesn’t understand elementary economics.
Look up the words supply, demand, price and market. Any introductory textbook will try to explain in such a fashion that even the dim-witted will get the gist.
I am neither a tory or a faux scot
Your profound ignorance and nastiness naturally led me to assume you were a Tory. What are you then? DUP, UKIP, BNP, Orange Order or some other scumbag outfit?
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
It's not pantomime villain though is it? The polls state about half the country supports the death penalty. Lots of people regard the poor as dysfunctional and think the state is too soft on miscreants. Maybe that's why Anderson is more of a lightning rod for the left than other Tories who've obviously done bad things - Baroness Mone, Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson - whilst their actions may be reprehensible there isn't anyone who would actually defend them for it.*
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
Much as Dan Hodges talks out of his arse sometimes, he made a very good point that the reaction to Anderson's comments has drawn out the latent snobbery on the left about the socially conservative plebs and the petit bourgeois. I don't think that helps Labour.
With regards to the LDs though, their target vote is well-off graduates who are think of themselves as socially liberal but who are also concerned enough about their own wealth to not vote Labour in case it means higher taxes. So probably makes sense for them to highlight this *
* with the caveat that in many of their target seats, there are often pockets of poorer more socially conservative areas
It’s not snobbery to be against the death penalty . You can disagree with something from a simple point of morality .
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
It's not pantomime villain though is it? The polls state about half the country supports the death penalty. Lots of people regard the poor as dysfunctional and think the state is too soft on miscreants. Maybe that's why Anderson is more of a lightning rod for the left than other Tories who've obviously done bad things - Baroness Mone, Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson - whilst their actions may be reprehensible there isn't anyone who would actually defend them for it.*
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
Much as Dan Hodges talks out of his arse sometimes, he made a very good point that the reaction to Anderson's comments has drawn out the latent snobbery on the left about the socially conservative plebs and the petit bourgeois. I don't think that helps Labour.
With regards to the LDs though, their target vote is well-off graduates who are think of themselves as socially liberal but who are also concerned enough about their own wealth to not vote Labour in case it means higher taxes. So probably makes sense for them to highlight this *
* with the caveat that in many of their target seats, there are often pockets of poorer more socially conservative areas
It’s not snobbery to be against the death penalty . You can disagree with something from a simple point of morality .
Aside from the small problem of killing the wrong people, the death penalty is very expensive.
Keeping someone in a a small cell until they die is probably crueler than a short drop and a sudden stop. Winston Churchill thought so - and he was one of the few Home Secs. who had endured imprisonment himself.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives, via social housing or private landlords. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
Secret Plot To Unravel Brexit . The waste of space Frost now moaning that the secret cabal of Remainers might try and change his alleged super EU deal .
This really is desperate stuff from the Hate Mail given a clear majority could care less now if Brexit was put out of its misery .
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
It's not pantomime villain though is it? The polls state about half the country supports the death penalty. Lots of people regard the poor as dysfunctional and think the state is too soft on miscreants. Maybe that's why Anderson is more of a lightning rod for the left than other Tories who've obviously done bad things - Baroness Mone, Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson - whilst their actions may be reprehensible there isn't anyone who would actually defend them for it.*
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
Much as Dan Hodges talks out of his arse sometimes, he made a very good point that the reaction to Anderson's comments has drawn out the latent snobbery on the left about the socially conservative plebs and the petit bourgeois. I don't think that helps Labour.
With regards to the LDs though, their target vote is well-off graduates who are think of themselves as socially liberal but who are also concerned enough about their own wealth to not vote Labour in case it means higher taxes. So probably makes sense for them to highlight this *
* with the caveat that in many of their target seats, there are often pockets of poorer more socially conservative areas
It’s not snobbery to be against the death penalty . You can disagree with something from a simple point of morality .
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
Have we done the Seymour Hersch "the Yanks blew up Nordstream 2" story?
Not sure what I think on that one.
It has been reported here. I said what I thought about the US benefitting itself by blowing up a piece of European infrastructure. Everybody else was as silent and deferential as Rishi Sunak on a Skype with Joe Biden.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
It's not pantomime villain though is it? The polls state about half the country supports the death penalty. Lots of people regard the poor as dysfunctional and think the state is too soft on miscreants. Maybe that's why Anderson is more of a lightning rod for the left than other Tories who've obviously done bad things - Baroness Mone, Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson - whilst their actions may be reprehensible there isn't anyone who would actually defend them for it.*
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
Much as Dan Hodges talks out of his arse sometimes, he made a very good point that the reaction to Anderson's comments has drawn out the latent snobbery on the left about the socially conservative plebs and the petit bourgeois. I don't think that helps Labour.
With regards to the LDs though, their target vote is well-off graduates who are think of themselves as socially liberal but who are also concerned enough about their own wealth to not vote Labour in case it means higher taxes. So probably makes sense for them to highlight this *
* with the caveat that in many of their target seats, there are often pockets of poorer more socially conservative areas
It’s not snobbery to be against the death penalty . You can disagree with something from a simple point of morality .
Aside from the small problem of killing the wrong people, the death penalty is very expensive.
Keeping someone in a a small cell until they die is probably crueler than a short drop and a sudden stop. Winston Churchill thought so - and he was one of the few Home Secs. who had endured imprisonment himself.
But it is a one off, 40 years at 100,000 a year (wild stab at cost of hi sec imprisonment) is a lorra money
I guarantee you that will be the line: Let's take all the money we spend on lifers and give it to Our NHS
Have we done the Seymour Hersch "the Yanks blew up Nordstream 2" story?
Not sure what I think on that one.
It has been reported here. I said what I thought about the US benefitting itself by blowing up a piece of European infrastructure. Everybody else was as silent and deferential as Rishi Sunak on a Skype with Joe Biden.
You mean the Seymour Hersch who spent so much effort on trying to prove that the Syrian regime wasn't using chemical weapons? The "rebels accidentally blew up the worlds largest store of cleaning products" excuse was deeply funny.
The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
Anyone serious about tackling the issue would have to accept that house prices need to stagnate for a couple of decades, if not fall, in order to get back to historical levels of affordability. No mainstream party will support that, as it would turn off essentially every homeowning voter, even if in the long term it would be good for the country.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse. Just considering the squeeling we have recently seen about what are modest interest rate rises and their effect on mortgages, no way is Starmer about to blow up the housing market.
Yes, but if nominal prices remain steady (or rise by less than inflation), owners’ equity isn’t shrinking, and no-one will be pushed into negative equity. Yes, their ‘investment’ would be significantly eroded by inflation - but then that’s been true for anyone with money in bank accounts for years now. The risk of course is that once it sinks in that housing is no longer the one-way bet to free money that it’s been for so long, prices start to fall faster and there’s a crash. If that can be avoided, a decade of level nominal prices is just what the doctor ordered.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and the Tories have allowed that revolution to be halted by selfish old people. Thatcher was right that people should own their homes, you seem to think that she was only right for people aged 60+ and everyone else either needs to leave where they grew up if it's too expensive, needs to have some kind of inheritance in their 30s (lol) or have extremely high incomes. You and your party don't seem to realise that 30 somethings are abandoning the Tories forever right now and unless you turn them into homeowners by the time they are 40 you're out of power forever after this election loss. There's no way back for the Tory party unless it becomes the party of those who work hard and want to get on in life, not the party of those who think they worked hard and want to leech off younger generations.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
The average house price in the South East being £489k, and Newham (not a very posh place!) being £471k, is a damning indictment of a socialist housing policy designed to stifle the free market.
The US has shot down another UFO, this time a reportedly octagonal one over Lake Huron in Michigan.
Chuck Schumer probably thinks this one is a balloon too.
The interesting thing is that they don’t know what these objects are, even when they spot them on radar, fly past them in the air and shoot them down. When - as I expect we will - we find out they are something mundane, sensible people ought to conclude that so many previous sightings of “UFOs” were also quite ordinary.
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
Have we done the Seymour Hersch "the Yanks blew up Nordstream 2" story?
Not sure what I think on that one.
It has been reported here. I said what I thought about the US benefitting itself by blowing up a piece of European infrastructure. Everybody else was as silent and deferential as Rishi Sunak on a Skype with Joe Biden.
You mean the Seymour Hersch who spent so much effort on trying to prove that the Syrian regime wasn't using chemical weapons? The "rebels accidentally blew up the worlds largest store of cleaning products" excuse was deeply funny.
I didn't comment on the veracity of the reports, merely the deeply disturbing implication if they were true.
As for the provenance of the act itself, it was always going to be an American-originated act whoever had done it. If the CIA story is true, I am relieved that the reports of us doing it have proved unfounded.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
£471k requires household income of ca. £90k to afford. That means even living in Newham requires a household to be in the top 5%. All of that to live in Newham, of all places. Don't you think it's mad that a household that is in the top 5% of the whole nation can't currently afford to live in a part of London that isn't a complete shit hole?
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Might the solution be building more houses, to reduce the price of housing, so mortgages are more affordable?
The Berlin state election has been a big success for the CDU with over 28% of the vote but the existing SPD-Green-Linke coalition has kept its majority winning 83 of the 147 seats with the CDU on 48 and AfD on 16.
Skimming the Survation data tables, it's not the worst poll for the Conservatives - the 2019 GE vote splits 53% Loyal, 23% Don't Know, 11% Labour and 9% Reform. The Conservative Don't Knows represent just over half of all the Don't Knows.
England splits 46-28-12 which means a 16.5% swing from Conservative to Labour and a 9.5% Conservative to LD. Scotland has the Conservatives running second to the SNP.
The Labour share is the lowest I've seen in a poll for some time - the Conservatives continue to struggle in the mid-20s and it's a better poll for the LDs and the other minor parties.
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
All those Media Studies grads and Diversity Managers would get proper jobs instead.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and the Tories have allowed that revolution to be halted by selfish old people. Thatcher was right that people should own their homes, you seem to think that she was only right for people aged 60+ and everyone else either needs to leave where they grew up if it's too expensive, needs to have some kind of inheritance in their 30s (lol) or have extremely high incomes. You and your party don't seem to realise that 30 somethings are abandoning the Tories forever right now and unless you turn them into homeowners by the time they are 40 you're out of power forever after this election loss. There's no way back for the Tory party unless it becomes the party of those who work hard and want to get on in life, not the party of those who think they worked hard and want to leech off younger generations.
Have you seen the balance of trade recently? That's where most of the money is going - the rest is being sucked up by a greedy and dysfunctional state. Turning on granny because she paid the mortgage off on her bungalow and has a few quid in the bank is way, way off the mark.
🔴 MIDLOTHIAN: former Gordon Brown No 10 adviser Kirsty McNeill picked as Labour candidate. Brown openly backed both McNeill & Douglas Alexander is this dual selection process.
New Labour is making a comeback thank God. We need the talent back
Must be desperate to ask for Brown's backing.
How dare a former Prime Minister and lifelong party member back people to be selected as candidates for the party! Bringing politics into politics…. A disgrace I tell you…..
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Might the solution be building more houses, to reduce the price of housing, so mortgages are more affordable?
Blocking foreign ownership of property, it's a huge factor in bidding up prices in London and a few other parts of the country. Foreign owners create demand for property and outcompete Londoners quite substantially. Taxing them out of existence would allow for more Londoners to buy property as prices fall due to lower demand.
The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
Anyone serious about tackling the issue would have to accept that house prices need to stagnate for a couple of decades, if not fall, in order to get back to historical levels of affordability. No mainstream party will support that, as it would turn off essentially every homeowning voter, even if in the long term it would be good for the country.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse. Just considering the squeeling we have recently seen about what are modest interest rate rises and their effect on mortgages, no way is Starmer about to blow up the housing market.
Alternatively, you could encourage inflation and high interest rates. Historically that has been the way housewives have been reduced in real terms to sensible multiples of average income.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Might the solution be building more houses, to reduce the price of housing, so mortgages are more affordable?
Blocking foreign ownership of property, it's a huge factor in bidding up prices in London and a few other parts of the country. Foreign owners create demand for property and outcompete Londoners quite substantially. Taxing them out of existence would allow for more Londoners to buy property as prices fall due to lower demand.
I've sometimes wondered if high divorce rates are the reason for some of this, particularly somewhere like Scotland where the population is roughly flat. Houses and flats going up everywhere but still...
The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
Anyone serious about tackling the issue would have to accept that house prices need to stagnate for a couple of decades, if not fall, in order to get back to historical levels of affordability. No mainstream party will support that, as it would turn off essentially every homeowning voter, even if in the long term it would be good for the country.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse. Just considering the squeeling we have recently seen about what are modest interest rate rises and their effect on mortgages, no way is Starmer about to blow up the housing market.
Alternatively, you could encourage inflation and high interest rates. Historically that has been the way housewives have been reduced in real terms to sensible multiples of average income.
Start by giving the nurses 18%
I have always rented my housewives rather than buy them outright.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Might the solution be building more houses, to reduce the price of housing, so mortgages are more affordable?
Blocking foreign ownership of property, it's a huge factor in bidding up prices in London and a few other parts of the country. Foreign owners create demand for property and outcompete Londoners quite substantially. Taxing them out of existence would allow for more Londoners to buy property as prices fall due to lower demand.
🔴 MIDLOTHIAN: former Gordon Brown No 10 adviser Kirsty McNeill picked as Labour candidate. Brown openly backed both McNeill & Douglas Alexander is this dual selection process.
New Labour is making a comeback thank God. We need the talent back
Must be desperate to ask for Brown's backing.
How dare a former Prime Minister and lifelong party member back people to be selected as candidates for the party! Bringing politics into politics…. A disgrace I tell you…..
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Might the solution be building more houses, to reduce the price of housing, so mortgages are more affordable?
Blocking foreign ownership of property, it's a huge factor in bidding up prices in London and a few other parts of the country. Foreign owners create demand for property and outcompete Londoners quite substantially. Taxing them out of existence would allow for more Londoners to buy property as prices fall due to lower demand.
I've sometimes wondered if high divorce rates are the reason for some of this, particularly somewhere like Scotland where the population is roughly flat. Houses and flats going up everywhere but still...
Vicious cycle because a lot of divorce pressure is down to money (or lack of it) which high housing cost feeds into significantly.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
£471k requires household income of ca. £90k to afford. That means even living in Newham requires a household to be in the top 5%. All of that to live in Newham, of all places. Don't you think it's mad that a household that is in the top 5% of the whole nation can't currently afford to live in a part of London that isn't a complete shit hole?
Average house price in Dagenham, still in London, is only £362k a year. Median salary in London is £41k, giving a potential household income of over £80k.
Average house price in Harlow in the commuter belt is £347k and in Rochester, also in commuter belt is £311k, all easily over 4.5 times average London household income with a mortgage
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
So you solve the problem by reducing house prices, which will in turn reduce the debt people have to borrow to buy one.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and the Tories have allowed that revolution to be halted by selfish old people. Thatcher was right that people should own their homes, you seem to think that she was only right for people aged 60+ and everyone else either needs to leave where they grew up if it's too expensive, needs to have some kind of inheritance in their 30s (lol) or have extremely high incomes. You and your party don't seem to realise that 30 somethings are abandoning the Tories forever right now and unless you turn them into homeowners by the time they are 40 you're out of power forever after this election loss. There's no way back for the Tory party unless it becomes the party of those who work hard and want to get on in life, not the party of those who think they worked hard and want to leech off younger generations.
Ultimately, the bonanza starting in the 80s and 90s had to come from somewhere.
Maggie had a curious blindspot about the windfalls of right to buy, privatisation and building society demutualisation. Mostly, she understood the moral dangers of unearned largesse, but one generation had huge amounts chucked their way. And lo, the moral danger bit (the assumption that this is how things should be) has come to pass. And the moral improvement bit (if I am fortunate, that increases my responsibilities towards my fellow men and women) largely hasn't.
But the Conservatives have thoroughly painted themselves into a corner on this one. I don't see how they get out in less than two terms.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
£471k requires household income of ca. £90k to afford. That means even living in Newham requires a household to be in the top 5%. All of that to live in Newham, of all places. Don't you think it's mad that a household that is in the top 5% of the whole nation can't currently afford to live in a part of London that isn't a complete shit hole?
Average house price in Dagenham, still in London, is only £362k a year. Median salary in London is £41k, giving a potential household income of over £80k
Zone 5+ isn't London, it's a commuter town. It takes over an hour door to door to commute from somewhere like Dagenham to Central London. You might as well be in Stevenage or Hitchin. It will have a better standard of living for sure.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and while a lot of people rented, the economy stagnated. And when Thatcher began promoting home ownership, the economy flourished.
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
To an extent yes but give too many unaffordable mortgages they cannot repay and you get a repeat of the 2008 Crash
Might the solution be building more houses, to reduce the price of housing, so mortgages are more affordable?
Blocking foreign ownership of property, it's a huge factor in bidding up prices in London and a few other parts of the country. Foreign owners create demand for property and outcompete Londoners quite substantially. Taxing them out of existence would allow for more Londoners to buy property as prices fall due to lower demand.
I've sometimes wondered if high divorce rates are the reason for some of this, particularly somewhere like Scotland where the population is roughly flat. Houses and flats going up everywhere but still...
Yes, more people staying married for life and reduced immigration would also reduce demand
The reason for obscenely high house prices is, in the long run, insufficient supply to meet demand.
After that you have factors bearing on demand, the most important of which is household formation (smaller households), and then immigration.
In the short-run, it has been the long period of zero interest rates, now coming to an end.
Buy-to-let and foreign ownership are more symptom than cause. Banning them might be justified on equality grounds, but won’t do anything about house prices.
I posted earlier today on how London could reduce house prices by following Auckland’s example. Politically, Auckland has managed it. I’m pretty sure London could too.
From reddit just now, spectacular asteroid to be visible at 3 a.m. from S England
1-meter asteroid to safely fall over English Channel at 3:00 AM UTC (3/4 AM local time)
Getting the alert out as quickly as I'm able so the most people are able to observe... A just-discovered asteroid temporarily designated Sar2667 is predicted to fall over the English Channel between Rouen, France and Brighton, England. The time of the fall will be 3:00:03 AM UTC, or 3 AM local time for England/4 AM local time for France. It should be around as bright as the full moon, coming at a 45 degree angle down from directly East, and should likely be visible in all levels of light pollution from southern England, Northern France, and western Belgium. Attached is the nominal entry location, and the best area of visibility surrounding it.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and the Tories have allowed that revolution to be halted by selfish old people. Thatcher was right that people should own their homes, you seem to think that she was only right for people aged 60+ and everyone else either needs to leave where they grew up if it's too expensive, needs to have some kind of inheritance in their 30s (lol) or have extremely high incomes. You and your party don't seem to realise that 30 somethings are abandoning the Tories forever right now and unless you turn them into homeowners by the time they are 40 you're out of power forever after this election loss. There's no way back for the Tory party unless it becomes the party of those who work hard and want to get on in life, not the party of those who think they worked hard and want to leech off younger generations.
They are homowners by the time they are 40, average age most own a property is 39.
Of course the Tories also won from 1970-1974, 1951-1964 and in most of the 1920s and 1930s even when most rented. Plus 45s to 60s will inherit more than any generation before them. The average voter is now 50 not 30
The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
Anyone serious about tackling the issue would have to accept that house prices need to stagnate for a couple of decades, if not fall, in order to get back to historical levels of affordability. No mainstream party will support that, as it would turn off essentially every homeowning voter, even if in the long term it would be good for the country.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse. Just considering the squeeling we have recently seen about what are modest interest rate rises and their effect on mortgages, no way is Starmer about to blow up the housing market.
Alternatively, you could encourage inflation and high interest rates. Historically that has been the way housewives have been reduced in real terms to sensible multiples of average income.
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
Agreed.
It is one of the reasons my daughter left London. The prospect of spending ever increasing amounts of her income on renting something not very nice, with little chance of saving let alone having spare money for holidays etc, was one of the drivers. There are housing problems in the Lakes too, don't get me wrong. But she has been able to save money here with the money she made from her business, is now earning a good salary and has a more realistic chance of buying property than she ever would in London.
I would only add that curbing airBnB's and holiday lets is also needed in tourist areas. The stamp duty holiday Sunak brought in during Covid just pushed prices up for those buying holiday homes in the Lakes, which is not what is needed here.
It's shocking to me just how much of an elitist city London is turning into. The juniors in my team all harbour dreams of buying a flat in London one day, and they're part of the lucky few who will be able to because they work in financial services, yet that's the future of the city. People who work in tech, financial and legal services who are able to buy their own place to live vs everyone else stuck renting off some scum landlord at the mercy of their whims for more pension income. The worst part about this is that my generation are relying on Keir Starmer to make a difference. I think everyone my age or around my age who hasn't yet bought knows, in the inner most thoughts, that Starmer will do precisely zero to tackle this, there will be no significant new affordable rental properties, no reform of private rentals and no push for building houses rather than flats.
My wife and I are very lucky that we both work in very high income careers, it shouldn't require that to afford to live in the city I grew up in and have our own family home. The rental market is out of control and it's time to just take a big axe to landlords (metaphorically) and if they don't like it they can sell.
You can get a house in Barking and Dagenham, Newham or Bexley cheaper than the Home Counties average, let alone the London average.
There is affordable housing in London, just not in central London but in less glamorous outer suburbia
The *average* house price in Newham is almost half a million pounds
£471k requires household income of ca. £90k to afford. That means even living in Newham requires a household to be in the top 5%. All of that to live in Newham, of all places. Don't you think it's mad that a household that is in the top 5% of the whole nation can't currently afford to live in a part of London that isn't a complete shit hole?
Average house price in Dagenham, still in London, is only £362k a year. Median salary in London is £41k, giving a potential household income of over £80k
Zone 5+ isn't London, it's a commuter town. It takes over an hour door to door to commute from somewhere like Dagenham to Central London. You might as well be in Stevenage or Hitchin. It will have a better standard of living for sure.
Stevenage also very affordable, average house price £349k.
I work in London but own property in Essex. Why do people on average salaries in London think they have a god given right to own property in inner London? If they aren't high earners it isn't going to happen so move to outer London or affordable parts of the surrounding counties. They can rent in London in their 20s on an average income but to buy then need to look further afield too
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and the Tories have allowed that revolution to be halted by selfish old people. Thatcher was right that people should own their homes, you seem to think that she was only right for people aged 60+ and everyone else either needs to leave where they grew up if it's too expensive, needs to have some kind of inheritance in their 30s (lol) or have extremely high incomes. You and your party don't seem to realise that 30 somethings are abandoning the Tories forever right now and unless you turn them into homeowners by the time they are 40 you're out of power forever after this election loss. There's no way back for the Tory party unless it becomes the party of those who work hard and want to get on in life, not the party of those who think they worked hard and want to leech off younger generations.
Ultimately, the bonanza starting in the 80s and 90s had to come from somewhere.
Maggie had a curious blindspot about the windfalls of right to buy, privatisation and building society demutualisation. Mostly, she understood the moral dangers of unearned largesse, but one generation had huge amounts chucked their way. And lo, the moral danger bit (the assumption that this is how things should be) has come to pass. And the moral improvement bit (if I am fortunate, that increases my responsibilities towards my fellow men and women) largely hasn't.
But the Conservatives have thoroughly painted themselves into a corner on this one. I don't see how they get out in less than two terms.
The moral hazard is surely not "this is how things should be" but the assumption by that generation that "we worked hard" is true rather than "we got lucky" was true. One of my many uncles is a complete waster in life, got a right to buy 3 bedroom flat in Euston, eked out a living working part time doing odd jobs here and there, inherited from my grandad a few years ago but talk to him and he'll tell you he's worked hard all his life to get his flat in Euston and now that he's looking to rent it out and move out of London he thinks it's extremely unfair that he should pay the 3% surcharge so he's going to do some dodgy deal where he'll have his youngest daughter (my cousin) buy his house (using my grandad's) money in her name. My dad has advised him against it as he thinks it's tax evasion but it's his "hard earned money and he doesn't want the taxman to get it".
If it wasn't so appalling it would be funny. It will be hilarious if he gets done for the 3%, doesn't actually own the property and gets the 80% fine as well.
🔴 MIDLOTHIAN: former Gordon Brown No 10 adviser Kirsty McNeill picked as Labour candidate. Brown openly backed both McNeill & Douglas Alexander is this dual selection process.
New Labour is making a comeback thank God. We need the talent back
Must be desperate to ask for Brown's backing.
How dare a former Prime Minister and lifelong party member back people to be selected as candidates for the party! Bringing politics into politics…. A disgrace I tell you…..
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
Oh to be so wise after the event....
Not sure it is a case of being wise after the event. To most of us it was the bleeding obvious.
Also, on the "just leave the most productive part of the UK to earn less at a job with worse prospects so you can afford to buy a two bed terrace in Stockton when you're 35" discourse, over the past five years rents have exploded in the UK's second cities and rural areas. Manchester and Birmingham aren't much cheaper than outer London, and housing availability in the countryside has collapsed, so if you're young you'll have to fight over the few houses that are available. It doesn't really matter where I live - huge amounts of my salary will be drained by people who haven't worked for it, who aren't contributing, who aren't productive, who can extract rent simply due to the fact they were born 40 years before I was. And it's shit.
It's extremely upsetting that this is the case and not just for you but for millions of 20 and 30 somethings who are stuck not being able to buy because incomes are being sucked into rents.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
Until the 1980s most of the country rented all their lives. Including the parents of today's 60 somethings. Not just renting in their 20s and early 30s, their entire lives.
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Yes, and the Tories have allowed that revolution to be halted by selfish old people. Thatcher was right that people should own their homes, you seem to think that she was only right for people aged 60+ and everyone else either needs to leave where they grew up if it's too expensive, needs to have some kind of inheritance in their 30s (lol) or have extremely high incomes. You and your party don't seem to realise that 30 somethings are abandoning the Tories forever right now and unless you turn them into homeowners by the time they are 40 you're out of power forever after this election loss. There's no way back for the Tory party unless it becomes the party of those who work hard and want to get on in life, not the party of those who think they worked hard and want to leech off younger generations.
Ultimately, the bonanza starting in the 80s and 90s had to come from somewhere.
Maggie had a curious blindspot about the windfalls of right to buy, privatisation and building society demutualisation. Mostly, she understood the moral dangers of unearned largesse, but one generation had huge amounts chucked their way. And lo, the moral danger bit (the assumption that this is how things should be) has come to pass. And the moral improvement bit (if I am fortunate, that increases my responsibilities towards my fellow men and women) largely hasn't.
But the Conservatives have thoroughly painted themselves into a corner on this one. I don't see how they get out in less than two terms.
The moral hazard is surely not "this is how things should be" but the assumption by that generation that "we worked hard" is true rather than "we got lucky" was true. One of my many uncles is a complete waster in life, got a right to buy 3 bedroom flat in Euston, eked out a living working part time doing odd jobs here and there, inherited from my grandad a few years ago but talk to him and he'll tell you he's worked hard all his life to get his flat in Euston and now that he's looking to rent it out and move out of London he thinks it's extremely unfair that he should pay the 3% surcharge so he's going to do some dodgy deal where he'll have his youngest daughter (my cousin) buy his house (using my grandad's) money in her name. My dad has advised him against it as he thinks it's tax evasion but it's his "hard earned money and he doesn't want the taxman to get it".
If it wasn't so appalling it would be funny. It will be hilarious if he gets done for the 3%, doesn't actually own the property and gets the 80% fine as well.
I suspect we're saying the same thing with different amounts of tact.
I wonder what the next bit of metaphorical furniture chucked on the national fire will be?
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
It's a great article. Shocking though.
I don't disagree with your comment: 'Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties' ...but it's a sad indictment of New Labour.
It's an appalling article; a fairy tale from a clueless goon who can't even write self-consistent fairy tales.
But then it's from Joel Golby, who has spent the last x years writing outrage bot clickbait from bits and pieces he's scraped off Zoopla, so I would expect him to be entirely out of touch with anything except his own rather manufactured offence.
It wouldn't surprise me if he has happily lived in a high quality rented property, in a good relationship with his landlord, throughout. But he knows his audience wants red meat so he writes it.
For example:
The landlord started the renovation works while you were all still on the end of your contract
The tenant has full possession until the end of the contract, to the extent of ability to change the locks. A landlord doing works does it by consent, or because it is in the contract the tenant signed. Usually to get early access requires crossing the tenant's palm with silver.
He's completely ignorant of the concept of tenantlike behaviour, which is absolutely basic when it comes to simple repairs etc. See his radiator rant.
(where is the regulation on the rental market, by the way? Why is there not like, one atom of regulation?
Does this guy have a drug habit to ask a question like that?
You haven’t been to a house party in a squat and taken ketamine for ages, for weeks. You’re an upstanding, decent member of society. So why does it feel like the city doesn’t want you here?
Oh, he does. Explains a lot, perhaps.
(In case anybody wants to have a pop, I rented six different places in London between 2000 and 2010, ranging from an 8x7 room in Walthamstow to a flat in Grove Park, Chiswick.)
Well worth the read, it's absolutely brilliant and accurate to my experiences of renting when I was in my 20s and of what I hear from the juniors in my team, extremely accurate to today.
The government hasn't been listening for far, far too long. Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties.
The reason my generation are not becoming conservative is because of this, the government hasn't listened to us about housing for 10+ years. My parents bought a 4 bedroom detached house in swanky (even then) suburb for under £150k and they bought it at a 3.5x income multiple with no help from my grandparents. To do that today for the same house, even with a £100k+ household income, people would need over 10x on the income multiple and a £200k deposit.
Every single politician should read the article, because it rings true for everyone who has rented in London in the last 15 years and it's getting worse. We need more affordable rents, more houses for sale and to block foreign ownership of property as other major cities do across the world.
It's a great article. Shocking though.
I don't disagree with your comment: 'Labour oversaw the explosion of the cowboy buy to let landlord and the Tories haven't done nearly enough to force them out of the sector and fund local authorities to build new social rental properties' ...but it's a sad indictment of New Labour.
It's an appalling article; a fairy tale from a clueless goon who can't even write self-consistent fairy tales.
But then it's from Joel Golby, who has spent the last x years writing outrage bot clickbait from bits and pieces he's scraped off Zoopla, so I would expect him to be entirely out of touch with anything except his own rather manufactured offence.
It wouldn't surprise me if he has happily lived in a high quality rented property, in a good relationship with his landlord, throughout. But he knows his audience wants red meat so he writes it.
For example:
The landlord started the renovation works while you were all still on the end of your contract
The tenant has full possession until the end of the contract, to the extent of ability to change the locks. A landlord doing works does it by consent, or because it is in the contract the tenant signed. Usually to get early access requires crossing the tenant's palm with silver.
He's completely ignorant of the concept of tenantlike behaviour, which is absolutely basic when it comes to simple repairs etc. See his radiator rant.
(where is the regulation on the rental market, by the way? Why is there not like, one atom of regulation?
Does this guy have a drug habit to ask a question like that?
You haven’t been to a house party in a squat and taken ketamine for ages, for weeks. You’re an upstanding, decent member of society. So why does it feel like the city doesn’t want you here?
Oh, he does. Explains a lot, perhaps.
(In case anybody wants to have a pop, I rented six different places in London between 2000 and 2010, ranging from an 8x7 room in Walthamstow to a flat in Grove Park, Chiswick.)
It’s not really my experience, either. I rented the same time as you, but only five different places
But one imagines we are a slightly different demographic.
I do know one 25 year old who would completely identify with this article. The issues are at the lower end of the market.
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
All those Media Studies grads and Diversity Managers would get proper jobs instead.
"In 2021/22 around 84% of the adult social care workforce identified as British, 7% (103,000 filled posts) identified as of an EU nationality and 9% (143,000 filled posts) of a non-EU nationality."
Someone should poll remainers on what percentage of care workers, nurses and doctors are from the EU. Would be fascinating.
Comments
All this is seen in parts of the world where enforced property scarcity isn't a problem.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/newham.html
Look up the words supply, demand, price and market. Any introductory textbook will try to explain in such a fashion that even the dim-witted will get the gist.
The number of people who would accept their house's value falling in relative or even absolute terms can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The fact is that for most people who buy a house it is their only significant asset, and watching it fall in value is something few people will be happy about.
God knows how you fix this without it being extremely painful to millions of people. I assume things will carry on getting worse. Just considering the squeeling we have recently seen about what are modest interest rate rises and their effect on mortgages, no way is Starmer about to blow up the housing market.
We need a national renewal and a party that gives a fuck about the future of the nation rather than just the 60+ selfish old people who have decided to live with their hands in our pockets.
When I looked at Marden in Kent, buying some agricultural land as a bet... One single house on 35 acres in (say) 20 years would have made me my investment back. With a nice profit. More would make me a millionaire, very rapidly.
I don't want Judith Ward, the Guildford 4 and the Birmingham 6 executed by the state on my behalf. A posthumous apology doesn't cut it for me.
If it isn't we have no business not having entirely open borders. That the plan?
Chuck Schumer probably thinks this one is a balloon too.
The Victorians saw house prices increasing and thought "Idea!"
And built vast areas of suburbs to sell to the aspiring. Which held house prices down by making some fucking houses available.
The modern housing market resembles the end of one of those movies where the hero and the villain are fighting in a burning airplane (or whatever). Maybe stop fighting and land somewhere with space, first?
Keeping someone in a a small cell until they die is probably crueler than a short drop and a sudden stop. Winston Churchill thought so - and he was one of the few Home Secs. who had endured imprisonment himself.
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/uk-rental-housing-markets/
It was only Thatcher's council house sales and mortgage expansion via the old building societies that ensured the majority now own property.
Secret Plot To Unravel Brexit . The waste of space Frost now moaning that the secret cabal of Remainers might try and change his alleged super EU deal .
This really is desperate stuff from the Hate Mail given a clear majority could care less now if Brexit was put out of its misery .
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices-in-South-East.html
Now we have a lot of people renting. And the economy is stagnating. And what do you think will happen if the government promotes home ownership?
I guarantee you that will be the line: Let's take all the money we spend on lifers and give it to Our NHS
The Daily Express now going on about the social care crisis due to the lack of staff . Wtf did this garbage paper think would happen when FOM stopped .
As for the provenance of the act itself, it was always going to be an American-originated act whoever had done it. If the CIA story is true, I am relieved that the reports of us doing it have proved unfounded.
Skimming the Survation data tables, it's not the worst poll for the Conservatives - the 2019 GE vote splits 53% Loyal, 23% Don't Know, 11% Labour and 9% Reform. The Conservative Don't Knows represent just over half of all the Don't Knows.
England splits 46-28-12 which means a 16.5% swing from Conservative to Labour and a 9.5% Conservative to LD. Scotland has the Conservatives running second to the SNP.
The Labour share is the lowest I've seen in a poll for some time - the Conservatives continue to struggle in the mid-20s and it's a better poll for the LDs and the other minor parties.
A great episode of Dispatches, squirrelled away after 10 pm on a Sunday.
Start by giving the nurses 18%
Average house price in Harlow in the commuter belt is £347k and in Rochester, also in commuter belt is £311k, all easily over 4.5 times average London household income with a mortgage
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/dagenham.html
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/harlow.html
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/rochester.html?country=england&searchLocation=Rochester
https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-salary-and-unemployment.html
Maggie had a curious blindspot about the windfalls of right to buy, privatisation and building society demutualisation. Mostly, she understood the moral dangers of unearned largesse, but one generation had huge amounts chucked their way. And lo, the moral danger bit (the assumption that this is how things should be) has come to pass. And the moral improvement bit (if I am fortunate, that increases my responsibilities towards my fellow men and women) largely hasn't.
But the Conservatives have thoroughly painted themselves into a corner on this one. I don't see how they get out in less than two terms.
After that you have factors bearing on demand, the most important of which is household formation (smaller households), and then immigration.
In the short-run, it has been the long period of zero interest rates, now coming to an end.
Buy-to-let and foreign ownership are more symptom than cause. Banning them might be justified on equality grounds, but won’t do anything about house prices.
I posted earlier today on how London could reduce house prices by following Auckland’s example. Politically, Auckland has managed it. I’m pretty sure London could too.
1-meter asteroid to safely fall over English Channel at 3:00 AM UTC (3/4 AM local time)
Getting the alert out as quickly as I'm able so the most people are able to observe... A just-discovered asteroid temporarily designated Sar2667 is predicted to fall over the English Channel between Rouen, France and Brighton, England. The time of the fall will be 3:00:03 AM UTC, or 3 AM local time for England/4 AM local time for France. It should be around as bright as the full moon, coming at a 45 degree angle down from directly East, and should likely be visible in all levels of light pollution from southern England, Northern France, and western Belgium. Attached is the nominal entry location, and the best area of visibility surrounding it.
Source:
[https://groups.io/g/mpml/topic/96923899#38386](https://groups.io/g/mpml/topic/96923899#38386)
Of course the Tories also won from 1970-1974, 1951-1964 and in most of the 1920s and 1930s even when most rented. Plus 45s to 60s will inherit more than any generation before them. The average voter is now 50 not 30
Do the same in the analogous parts of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds.
Job done.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/stevenage.html
I work in London but own property in Essex. Why do people on average salaries in London think they have a god given right to own property in inner London? If they aren't high earners it isn't going to happen so move to outer London or affordable parts of the surrounding counties. They can rent in London in their 20s on an average income but to buy then need to look further afield too
If it wasn't so appalling it would be funny. It will be hilarious if he gets done for the 3%, doesn't actually own the property and gets the 80% fine as well.
I wonder what the next bit of metaphorical furniture chucked on the national fire will be?
But then it's from Joel Golby, who has spent the last x years writing outrage bot clickbait from bits and pieces he's scraped off Zoopla, so I would expect him to be entirely out of touch with anything except his own rather manufactured offence.
It wouldn't surprise me if he has happily lived in a high quality rented property, in a good relationship with his landlord, throughout. But he knows his audience wants red meat so he writes it.
For example:
The landlord started the renovation works while you were all still on the end of your contract
The tenant has full possession until the end of the contract, to the extent of ability to change the locks. A landlord doing works does it by consent, or because it is in the contract the tenant signed. Usually to get early access requires crossing the tenant's palm with silver.
He's completely ignorant of the concept of tenantlike behaviour, which is absolutely basic when it comes to simple repairs etc. See his radiator rant.
(where is the regulation on the rental market, by the way? Why is there not like, one atom of regulation?
Does this guy have a drug habit to ask a question like that?
You haven’t been to a house party in a squat and taken ketamine for ages, for weeks. You’re an upstanding, decent member of society. So why does it feel like the city doesn’t want you here?
Oh, he does. Explains a lot, perhaps.
(In case anybody wants to have a pop, I rented six different places in London between 2000 and 2010, ranging from an 8x7 room in Walthamstow to a flat in Grove Park, Chiswick.)
I rented the same time as you, but only five different places
But one imagines we are a slightly different demographic.
I do know one 25 year old who would completely identify with this article. The issues are at the lower end of the market.
Someone should poll remainers on what percentage of care workers, nurses and doctors are from the EU. Would be fascinating.