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Abandoning Housing targets – Sunak’s election losing mistake? – politicalbetting.com
Abandoning Housing targets – Sunak’s election losing mistake? – politicalbetting.com
Rishi Sunak has admitted that he ditched housing targets because Tory members told him to.This is utterly shameful from a weak Prime Minister. https://t.co/pUdSjNICqe
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I agree it's not a sufficient answer for the longer term. The manifesto will be interesting, where I'd expect something to be subtly reunt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Fortas
Hat-tip, this ThioJoe video on hidden chrome menus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJGvfDinUOY
@Sean_F: the active/passive thing reminds me of the back end (ahem) of a BBC radio play I caught, unusually for me. I think it was Antinous[sp] lamenting how he was seen or suchlike.
Interesting note on pagan hardliners. I wonder if that was something relatively specific to Elagabalus [interesting use of the anachronistic name in the book's title] given he was rather wacky.
This is the guy who Greg Abbott has promised to pardon for murder.
This is ONE PAGE of the 76 just released. Here, Daniel Perry says “I will only shoot the [protestors] in front and push the pedal to the metal.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1646683812749885440
The Tories have been in power for over a decade and have presided over a miserable failure on housing.
Let's just wait for 'the manifesto' for their next term ?
Laughable, if it weren't one of the country's more pressing problems.
I once had a dream about playing with my dog. Normally when I wake up I'm a bit groggy or such but that morning I was raring to go downstairs and see her. And then I remembered she'd been dead for months.
Instead, he’s portraying himself as the NIMBYs NIMBY. I’m rich, and don’t care about the rest of you. Which becomes a great attack line from Starmer in 18 months’ time.
If Starmer has any sense (insert joke here), he’ll go big on housing at the election, to try and turn out the youngsters.
It’s weird how memory plays tricks on us though, and doesn’t always react to changes of circumstance as we’d like.
Politicians want new housing, but not in their constituencies/boroughs/wards.
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article244781888/Umfrage-Mehrheit-haelt-Atomausstieg-zum-jetzigen-Zeitpunkt-fuer-falsch.html
I think this is rather like taxes, I support it as long as it is not my taxes going up or housing by me
Mr. F, blimey, I was only vaguely aware of Sporus, didn't realise he suffered at the hands of Otho and Vitellius as well.
If a tsunami was big enough to hit nuclear plants in Bavaria that would be the least of Germany's problems.
Perhaps we should double council tax and reduce income tax, perhaps we should set councillors’ personal remuneration as a percentage of council tax takings?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/13/ukrainian-orchestra-key-members-refused-visas-play-uk
Six One NewsJoe Biden Show early yesterday evening, only to find that they no longer had time for the weather forecast afterwards. Even during the pandemic, when the Taoiseach forbade anyone from straying more than 2km from their homes, they still broadcast the weather forecast for all the difference it made to anyone. But, cancelled to make way for Biden.Think Labour will brave it? Maybe. Personally, I doubt it.
Horseracing when Gooch was 299 not out. No wonder sky won the coverage and its Been superb ever since. Its worth every penny of the subscription.
The sad thing about Rishi Sunak sucking up to them is that they didn't even vote for him. Can you imagine the kind of self-abasement involved in kissing up to people who think you are less preferable than Liz Truss?
The weather forecasters here have perfected the art of saying it will be wet without saying that it will be wet. British forecasters are mere amateurs in comparison. All pushed to one side to make room for Joe.
Belonging also requires knowing what words not to use. As social animals, we can’t help but practise what linguistics expert Deborah Cameron calls “verbal hygiene”: trying to purify language of socially problematic word choices. If you’re a well-off Tory, you’ll want to avoid terms such as “toilet”, “lounge” and “settee”. If you’re a well-off Lefty, you’ll want to avoid phrases such as “ladies and gentlemen”, “cancel culture” and “lab leak”. The Right dislikes grammatical solecisms, especially when committed by Angela Rayner; the Left is much more concerned with moral solecisms. Either way, though, it’s at least partly a way of indicating who’s in and who’s out.
https://unherd.com/2023/04/how-the-trans-census-fooled-britain/
The thing with this 'tory members going mad about housing targets' is that it is not a trivial concern of 0.8% of the population, there is mass disillusionment with the system of planning the Conservatives introduced in 2012.
In very simple terms, the government directed that Council's have to plan for, approve and deliver X houses or else developers can build anywhere as long as there is no significant harm.
The actual system of making a plan is a byzantine, adversarial process that is picked apart at every stage by warring land speculators/private interests and their KCs. It takes about 5 years, costs millions and many never happen at all.
While you are making a plan, the government keep changing the rules, the 'mutant algorhythm' thing that you sometimes hear about, ie doubling the amount of housing you have to provide, with a flick of a pen, etc.
Then of course the government also defund the local authorities that have to make these plans through 'austerity', just to make it even more impossible.
It was really just a cynical ploy on the part of government to get housing delivered without taking any responsibility for the difficult decisions: a dysfunctional bureaucracy to make seemingly absurd decisions in the hope that people would blame Council's or planning Inspectors for it.
The current thing that you hear about 'saving the housing targets' is best interpreted as a campaign by the development industry and their professional advisors to keep the current system going because they have built an entire industry around how to profit from the existing structural uncertainty.
The actual solution is to resolve the structural uncertainty by government taking and owning difficult political decisions about where new housing and associated development goes.
The gap between the elite and the masses was enormous. But, even the elite could face terrible ends, at the hands of emperors or rivals.
This is not to say that the census was properly tested. There were other problems around race and religion, you may recall. And although the trans question has been widely quoted and really, seems quite straightforward, that was in English and not one of the many translated languages.
If it were limited to this one issue as a cynical electoral ploy perhaps the end could justify the means.
But its not. Its their approach to everything. Make silly promises with no interest in acting on them. New hospitals, the border, law and order, transport, the environment - all full of promises that are repeated at each election and never delivered.
They have simply run out of ideas and motivation to do anything bar win elections. Less than two years to go and good riddance to them.
I really think we should be doing something similar now. The demand is there, it is an economic activity which does not undermine our precarious balance of payments as much as other boosts to the economy (we would probably import some of the materials) and it can improve our skill base.
I agree that some new towns would be a good start for this but we need to do so much more. Rather than losing housing targets Rishi should have been looking at doubling them and allowing either local authorities or housing associations to get in on the act by allowing them to borrow more for this particular purpose with Treasury backing.
Even on the most self interested level new generations of home owners will be rich in new Conservative voters, people stuck in insecure rented accommodation will not. I agree with Mike that this is a major mistake by Rishi and Hunt.
If Labour's position differs from that it will piss me off.
This is one area of policy where I am probably closer to the other parties.
New housing is needed in places of greatest economic activity, because that’s where there are jobs and people want to live.
There was also that remarkable map of satisfaction with the planning system which one of us [edit: posted ] some years back. It showed a stark border along Solway and Tweed - general satisfaction to the north, outrage to the south. We were surprised by this and discussed it a bit at the time on PB but couldn't get to the root of the matter to decide why that might be.
As you say, there are plenty of areas that need redeveloping. Flatten everything in sight then build new homes would be better than what we have now - and most towns have areas either soon to be bulldozed or they already have been and are now vacant.
And new towns? When you build a new village, or town - almost always a bolt-on to what is already there - you have to build services. Shops, schools, doctors, roads. They work. People get seriously fucked off with new build developments because there are no new services and it leads to gridlock.
This must just be a London thing, while the rest of the country lies fallow?
In Dundee there have been a series of very small but pleasant developments by housing associations in brown field sites. It has definitely improved run down parts of the town. Maintenance of existing stock has been more problematic given the restrictions on local authority spending but I would agree it is something we seem to have done a bit better, if not with the same pressures.
The rot started under Thatcher, with the Treasury taking tens of billions from the proceeds of council house sales.
The problems of housing and local government finance have been entwined for four decades.
We really need to get people living in town and city centres again. I used to walk from Piccadilly to Victoria stations in Manchester of an evening mid 90s and the centre of Manchester was dark and foreboding.
Then the IRA kickstarted a massive redevelopment scheme with their truck bomb, and now tens of thousands of people live there, the streets are bright and busy. Apartment blocks everywhere.
This has to be the way forward. Build new blocks for younger people, for singles, for people who like the bustle of city life. Fix housing and town regeneration in one hit.
Planning permission needs to be saying that they’ll be selling to UK residents.
But largely what you have proposed does nothing for the left behind areas. Iain Duncan Satan infamously went to Merthyr Tydfil and pointed out to the unemployed single mums that there were plentiful jobs down in Cardiff.
In bars. Working evenings. With no childcare. Or public transport.
What we need is jobs where people live. Bring communities back to life or they will cease to be communities. With remote working now easy to do we could install gigabit broadband up the valley and set up customer service centre businesses - as one example.
Firstly most people who have an opinion have exactly two views on housebuilding. They want (a) more of it and (b) less of it. This causes policy difficulties was those who want to be elected.
Secondly on the whole governments and parliament don't build houses. Housebuilders do. They are not charities. They understand the economics of supply and demand. Limited supply is of great assistance to them.
However at the next general election and longer term it won't help the Conservatives, especially in terms of regaining the 30 to 40 vote which mostly votes Labour as most of them are still renters not home owners
They build what they want. Where they want. Thanks to the NPPF. Purely coincidentally, developers have donated more than £60m to the Tory party in recent years...
The only new build in or near the town centre in recent years has been student accommodation of which a fair bit has been built but this creates very quiet areas out of term time making it hard for shops to survive there. Several just close down when the students are away.
I've noted before the propensity of government to dump responsibility for awkward problems (see also social care) on local authorities, while simultaneously squeezing their finances.
It's worked for a long time as an electoral tactic, but it's ruinous for good government.
I think I will vote for Sunak... that sorts my conscience.
Trans people tend to be (unsurprisingly) rather paranoid about that state. The numbers not answering such questions on the census will not be small.
https://twitter.com/macnahgalla/status/1646768014426091522?s=20
Exhibit I
1. Buy and refurbish the theatre. "A colossal waste of money, a white elephant that nobody wants" said the Tories. Place always sells out big name acts.
2. Build and operate a name hotel. Again, very busy despite Tory barbs.
3. Revamp the high street itself. Paving, lights, fountains. Make it a place people want to be
4. Promote "only in Stockton" - various festivals (music, culture - which are BIG), local specialist shops. A point of difference from the generic found anywhere closing down everywhere chains
5. Compulsory purchase all the shops. Don't let old department stores rot in the hands of a Hong Kong property company. They are demolishing the 1970s mall which will become a riverside park. All shops concentrated in the 1990s mall which they also own.
Compared to close neighbour Middlesbrough, they are winning. Boro increasingly run down, clinging to its multiple shopping malls despite no shops being in them. Stockton is thriving. But its taken some brave decisions from the Labour/independent council. The opposition have been against every scheme as a waste of money, but never proposed any alternatives...
The fixable bits are to do with the way that the current electoral coalitions are built. The Conservatives are utterly in hock to opponents of housebuilding (read "The Triumph of Janet" for an excellent rant on the subject.) Labour voters and places are generally much more positive about the idea of building more homes, so there's a chance of them having political space to do something.
It's also a manifestation of Rishi's cosplay Boris problem. Like his mentor, he knows he has to say something about protecting the green belt, because his audience demand it. Because Rishi is naive, green and not as much of a fraud as Bozza, he insists on acting on it as well.
But the political structural problem won't go away. Under our electoral system, there will always be one MP and one or more councillors whose careers depend on stopping any given development. Because any development is in someone's back yard. So stuff doesn't get built, and (I suspect) the UK remains in a Reluctant Turkish Stepmother In AI situation.
Most other countries subsidise their industries, we do not. The post-Thatcher settlement is that the free market decides if we should be making things like bricks and steel. But our steel can't compete against subsidised steel. And not just China - Belgium, Italy etc do the same.
We need jobs where people live and more housing (and other infrastructure) where there are plentiful jobs.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/14/fast-build-modular-homes-an-answer-to-the-uk-housing-crisis
Though with a 2 bed costing £195 000 to £220 000, cost seems the biggest problem.
Though darkage is correct about how absurd things currently are as well.
On the grounds that there's less economic benefit from it.
A vicious cycle from which there's no escape without a huge change in mindset.