Dr. Foxy, Britannia went absolutely backwards when the Romans left. The de-urbanisation was not a matter of success and choice, as fear and consequence.
London was briefly replaced/surpassed by Londonwic[sp], a little along the river. This was in Anglo-Saxon times, if memory serves, but the Viking threat meant it was easier to return to London and repair the walls for safety.
Also, the absence of the Romans led to a massive collapse in both trade and coinage.
Hm. I'm loathe to quibble with you on matters of ancient history, as I know this is a specialist area of yours. But.
While I'd agree that to outward appearances Britannia went backwards - de-urbanisation, etc. - I'd argue that the picture is a little more ambiguous. If you were outside of society's elite - as most people were - the departure of the Romans lifted quite an onerous burden of taxation (by whatever means) and perhaps increased your quality of life. And while the threat of raids grew, for most villages peace remained common - and it's not as if the Romans had ever been that good at preventing raids anyway.
History reports a sense of living in a time of after the fall - but I suspect that is partly because history was written by the urban classes, for whom decline was visible. But was yer average peasant better off before or after Roman occupation? My guess is after (plague and crop failure aside). Even many bigwigs would have been better off post-Rome as they were under the Roman yoke, when their bigwiggery was by design temporary, with the Roman empire inheriting half of what they owned until family wealth dwindled away. (Of course, it would in many cases have been different bigwigs.)
Possibly the main source of misery in the early middle ages was crop failure and plague - but that wasn't really down to who was in charge, if anyone.
There was probably a sweet spot, when the British were spared the cost of maintaining the legions and imperial civil service, but before the raids and civil strife began.
But, ultimately, the breakdown of trade meant that all kinds of goods that could be cheaply mass-produced like tiles and pottery, had to be homemade, and that communities had to become entirely self-sufficient, rather than being able to specialise. Bryan Ward Perkins and Brett Devereaux demonstrate convincingly (at least to me) that Western European living standards took a dive after 400. They say the archaeological evidence shows that diets gradually got worse, and livestock grew smaller.
"We send Rome 350 million denarii a week..."
Painted on the side of a chariot.
PB pedantry: it's libri, surely, and on a currus - chariot is for only 2 folk.
On housing, my position is no building on greenfield sites.
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.
Conversely I'm totally fine with building on green fields. Prioritise brownfield? Sure. But I've seen far too many absurdities where people complain about perfectly decent extensions onto some unattractive, useless 'greenfield' as though it were the most stellar land in the Green Belt and not some marginal piece of well connected scrub land.
The trouble is that building on green fields is nearly always easy money for developers and building on brownfield is too hard, risky and expensive. Developers will just instinctively just roll out a cul-de-sac in a field with the standard house types surrounded by a few bushes, justified by the maxim that 'it is what our customers want'. A whole industry of consultants and lawyers is based around pandering to this philistine instinct, but recently the government have started to ask them to do better and back this up with changes to policy.
One suggestion for the "brown fields" problem, is to separate the foundations, base services, etc from the construction. As in, subsidise/provide/(get done) getting plots to the stage of a foundation slab with drains, electrical etc connected, and sell to buyers. All the unknown are in the ground.....
I seem to recall this kind of development was popular in some parts of the US - you got to self build on the slab, basically.
Yeah that happens, there are grants for that, at least for the decontamination and site preperation. IE I have recently worked with a site which was an unregulated municipal landfill. The Council got £2 million to prepare it for 20,000 sqm commercial development. It owned the site which helps. I guess the difficulties kick in with smaller urban sites in private ownership.
A good example of this is Barking Riverside, they auction off serviced plots to developers to derisk the development, it is the biggest construction site in Europe. Incidentally, and in advance of any possible debate about affordable housing in London, Barking Riverside is proof that high quality affordable housing does actually exist in London if you can hold your nose and live in Barking. There is an overground train station in the development, and it is served by the UBER boat along the thames, it has a school that is outstanding, and the flats start at £265k with various first time buyer incentives. If I was to move to London that is where I would go.
A couple of years back, Hounslow council forced Thames Tradesmen Rowing club out of the site they rented from the council.
The building was godawful ugly. But more importantly, low rise
The plot has sat empty (building demolished), since the council got caught talking to developers. After encouraging a footbridge to the site to be built at vast public expense.
Now they are claiming to be talking about "river accessibility" - which is bollocks, since Tradesmen hosted a canoe club and paddle boarders etc. The only people who want to get to the river are rowers, canoeists and paddle boarders. There's not even a shortage of public slips in the general area - river access available by law...
When I asked why they didn't do what has been done on the rest of the river - build a block of flats above a boat house, and rent the boat house to Tradesmen - there was an awkward silence. Take the payment from the developer in the form of flats for social housing, if they can't raise the money themselves.....
Not sure about this example, but generally it is quite difficult for a public authority to abandon a decision like this once it is taken, however absurd it gets. It is different to a commercial venture where more rational considerations kick in because of the need to report to shareholders etc.
They kicked Tradesmen out, demolished and then started fiddling around with "consultations"
Some local people discovered they were talking to property developers about luxury flats on the site and the council did their famous impression of a small boy, caught with the jam jar in his hand, with his face covered in jam, denying any responsibility for a jam shortfall.
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
I think the materials issue is a consequence of Ukraine and Covid legacy supply chain issues. The answer to labour costs rising is either through cutting the minimum wage (unlikely) or automation. Regarding the latter, the prefab/factory houses idea is a good one but the costs are higher than traditional blockwork construction. The reason developers go for it is certainty and speed rather than cost.
The question is the services - electrical, water, gas. And, I should add*, network. These are where money gets spent and a lot of time on fit out. Throwing up block walls takes very little time. As does covering walls with insulation boards.
*If you are doing a property yourself, hardwire with Cat 6.
Wifi is now good enough for most families, and indeed most companies.
Have fun with installing foil layered insulation in your home. Also, unless your house is tiny, the wifi mesh solutions are rubbish.
I'm reworking a house at the moment. The plan is Cat 6 to every room. With a combined PoE Wifi point/mini switch (4 ethernet sockets) in each room.
Then all you need is a network switch to plug the Cat 6 into....
If you do it while you are building, it costs pretty much nothing. A bit of cable, and an extra socket in each room.
And if you'd hardwired with cat 4 or even cat 5 you'd now be looking at rewiring. I've spent the last couple of decades working for multinational and global tech companies and for office IT they've largely switched to wifi even though their buildings are already cabled.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
The problem is that the building cost of a property is roughly what it sells for, plus a few percent.
Crash house prices, and it won't be profitable to build. Not unless construction costs collapse alongside.
Hertsmere is one of the few places where the Tories did markedly worse in the 2021 County council elections than in in the 2019 borough elections. The reason? Labour and the Lib Dem’s whipped up a successful campaign against new house building. So, the Conservative administration dropped their local plan in response.
Politicians want new housing, but not in their constituencies/boroughs/wards.
There seems to be a lot lower opposition to new housing further north.
Perhaps because new housing here is seen as an improvement whereas in the Waitrose belt it isn't ?
Former mining villages are certainly not downgraded by new housing plus there's vast tracts of old abandoned agricultural / mining railway / military land that does need to be redeveloped.
Maybe because housing values are a significantly lower proportion of an individual's overall wealth.
Or does being a home owner in an area of unaffordable housing bring a social smugness and exclusivity ?
The concern here is around will local schools, GPs (Hah !) be able to cope with the increase in population. Not really 'Will it devalue my house'.
Governments can set whatever house targets they can pluck out of their arses, but there is one truth they can't deny. In this country, we don't have anywhere near enough skilled trades people to build 'em. Successive Governments have encouraged university over apprenticeships, steered our youth into easy, comfortable jobs rather than getting their hands dirty building something. Another factor is a stupid focus on creating narrow expertise jobs. Years ago, a chippy would be a general purpose wood butcher, in at the very start doing shuttering for the foundations to the very end doing second fixing of skirting and architrave. Now we have different trades for different tasks. Window fitters don't touch anything else, a roofer won't fancy doing architrave. There is a massive construction skills desert in this country, and we just don't encourage people to go into the trade.
At current trade rates it should not be a problem enticing young people to go into these trades with a higher starting salary...
I wonder how much social class expectations affect this.
Even only a generation ago it was quite normal for middle class kids not to go to university whereas now its regarded as almost obligatory, especially if their parents did so.
Yes, Tony Blair increased the school leaving age to 21. Interestingly, American college enrolment rates have dropped in recent years and the fall seems to be outlasting the pandemic; US commentators are divided on whether this is good or bad.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
I think the materials issue is a consequence of Ukraine and Covid legacy supply chain issues. The answer to labour costs rising is either through cutting the minimum wage (unlikely) or automation. Regarding the latter, the prefab/factory houses idea is a good one but the costs are higher than traditional blockwork construction. The reason developers go for it is certainty and speed rather than cost.
The question is the services - electrical, water, gas. And, I should add*, network. These are where money gets spent and a lot of time on fit out. Throwing up block walls takes very little time. As does covering walls with insulation boards.
*If you are doing a property yourself, hardwire with Cat 6.
Wifi is now good enough for most families, and indeed most companies.
Have fun with installing foil layered insulation in your home. Also, unless your house is tiny, the wifi mesh solutions are rubbish.
I'm reworking a house at the moment. The plan is Cat 6 to every room. With a combined PoE Wifi point/mini switch (4 ethernet sockets) in each room.
Then all you need is a network switch to plug the Cat 6 into....
If you do it while you are building, it costs pretty much nothing. A bit of cable, and an extra socket in each room.
And if you'd hardwired with cat 4 or even cat 5 you'd now be looking at rewiring. I've spent the last couple of decades working for multinational and global tech companies and for office IT they've largely switched to wifi even though their buildings are already cabled.
In proper commercial buildings, with the easy access to cabling? All the places I've worked in the city are hard wirde for the corporate network. WifI is a guest network with no access to real systems....
Cat 6 is good for 10Gbps - that's pretty future proof. You could always lay fibre at the same time, if you want. Running dark fibre is just the cost of a roll of fibre.
Its likely even worse than for previous generations because first time buyers are older now than previously.
Add in the issue of student debt and a life of wage slavery beckons.
Subsistence farming and land seizures looking good again?
Something for the Lib Dems to espouse? Thinking of the crofting legislation and the Highlands and Islands land wars up to the 1920s - though I am less familiar with any similar agitation down south, apart from the Chartists and Charterville in Oxon.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
The problem is that the building cost of a property is roughly what it sells for, plus a few percent.
Crash house prices, and it won't be profitable to build. Not unless construction costs collapse alongside.
50% of the cost of building is labour. Roughly.
Guess what much of the salary of builders goes on?
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
I think the materials issue is a consequence of Ukraine and Covid legacy supply chain issues. The answer to labour costs rising is either through cutting the minimum wage (unlikely) or automation. Regarding the latter, the prefab/factory houses idea is a good one but the costs are higher than traditional blockwork construction. The reason developers go for it is certainty and speed rather than cost.
The question is the services - electrical, water, gas. And, I should add*, network. These are where money gets spent and a lot of time on fit out. Throwing up block walls takes very little time. As does covering walls with insulation boards.
*If you are doing a property yourself, hardwire with Cat 6.
Wifi is now good enough for most families, and indeed most companies.
Have fun with installing foil layered insulation in your home. Also, unless your house is tiny, the wifi mesh solutions are rubbish.
I'm reworking a house at the moment. The plan is Cat 6 to every room. With a combined PoE Wifi point/mini switch (4 ethernet sockets) in each room.
Then all you need is a network switch to plug the Cat 6 into....
If you do it while you are building, it costs pretty much nothing. A bit of cable, and an extra socket in each room.
And if you'd hardwired with cat 4 or even cat 5 you'd now be looking at rewiring. I've spent the last couple of decades working for multinational and global tech companies and for office IT they've largely switched to wifi even though their buildings are already cabled.
In proper commercial buildings, with the easy access to cabling? All the places I've worked in the city are hard wirde for the corporate network. WifI is a guest network with no access to real systems....
Cat 6 is good for 10Gbps - that's pretty future proof. You could always lay fibre at the same time, if you want. Running dark fibre is just the cost of a roll of fibre.
Yes, companies who do networking for a living switched to wifi in the past four or five years, despite being in the same cabled buildings. Basically, wifi caught up.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
The problem is that the building cost of a property is roughly what it sells for, plus a few percent.
Crash house prices, and it won't be profitable to build. Not unless construction costs collapse alongside.
50% of the cost of building is labour. Roughly.
Guess what much of the salary of builders goes on?
British house building is incredibly inefficient compared to elsewhere though./
Separately - crash house prices and the real impact would be felt in the price of land with a chance of planning permission.
pg22 - the most dramatic period of social and economic collapse in British history/food would have been in short supply
But some had a greater sense of sovereignty. Until dropping dead from starvation and plague.
I almost can't believe we're having this conversation, but starvation was down to a series of poor summers, and plague was down to plague. Neither were consequences of the Romans leaving and more than covid and war in Ukraine were consequences of Brexit.
Correlation <> causation.
I think you can make a case that central organisation in food storage and distribution can make a society more resistant to famine etc. It depends on the government of course, as some governments have either been callous about inflicting famine, or even use it as a weapon.
In the Anglo-Saxon period the Church had a 10% tithe on crops, and priests were from the local village, so had a primitive welfare state. It was when the Church became centralised that the tithes were diverted to support wealthy abbots rather than poor peasants.
The Roman Empire basically practised "trickle up" economics. Lesser landowners extorted from the peasants, while seeking ways to avoid paying tax, like joining town councils. Greater landowners extorted from the lesser, while using their influence to avoid taxes. The imperial bureaucracy extorted from everybody. But, the bureaucrats didn't care where the taxes came from, so long as they got paid. So in practice, the tax burden fell upon the poorest.
So, the lot of a British peasant, in say 350, would not have been a good one. But what they got in place of organised extortion, under the Romans, was disorganised extortion, under British and Saxon warlords, and Irish slave raiders.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
However, there was a huge amount of warfare in what had been Britannia, and that was before the Vikings showed up. Roman urban centres were more defensible and this degree of security probably wasn't returned to until Alfred's burhs (although these may have existed before his policy, it was that decision which made them a regular mainstay of defence).
There was also a breakdown in law and a return to might makes right, which saw minor kings squabble then consolidate their realms into larger kingdoms. The return to unity (for England) took about four or five centuries and had a ton of war in between.
And the population declined in a way that would not be repeated until the Black Death.
I see, sort of relatedly, the last series of The Last Kingdom starts today. Thought latterly it went off the boil a bit but I like the series title, Seven Kings Must Die. I’ll be watching, on the boil or not I guess.
Dr. Foxy, Britannia went absolutely backwards when the Romans left. The de-urbanisation was not a matter of success and choice, as fear and consequence.
London was briefly replaced/surpassed by Londonwic[sp], a little along the river. This was in Anglo-Saxon times, if memory serves, but the Viking threat meant it was easier to return to London and repair the walls for safety.
Also, the absence of the Romans led to a massive collapse in both trade and coinage.
Hm. I'm loathe to quibble with you on matters of ancient history, as I know this is a specialist area of yours. But.
While I'd agree that to outward appearances Britannia went backwards - de-urbanisation, etc. - I'd argue that the picture is a little more ambiguous. If you were outside of society's elite - as most people were - the departure of the Romans lifted quite an onerous burden of taxation (by whatever means) and perhaps increased your quality of life. And while the threat of raids grew, for most villages peace remained common - and it's not as if the Romans had ever been that good at preventing raids anyway.
History reports a sense of living in a time of after the fall - but I suspect that is partly because history was written by the urban classes, for whom decline was visible. But was yer average peasant better off before or after Roman occupation? My guess is after (plague and crop failure aside). Even many bigwigs would have been better off post-Rome as they were under the Roman yoke, when their bigwiggery was by design temporary, with the Roman empire inheriting half of what they owned until family wealth dwindled away. (Of course, it would in many cases have been different bigwigs.)
Possibly the main source of misery in the early middle ages was crop failure and plague - but that wasn't really down to who was in charge, if anyone.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
Are they actually aiming to get their house firebombed by locals?
Noone needs two houses, but if you happen to have more than one the decent thing to do is rent it out the whole year (Renters and OOs are passu so far as houses-people ratio is concerned)- having a "holiday home", AirBNB or 'investment property' actively worsens the housing shortage.
Round here, land for building isn't an issue. The local farmers and landed gentry are chomping at the bit to flog off their land to big developers. Getting the council palms greased enough to allow the building proves a little difficult, but they usually come to an agreement.
Mr. F, also, tax farming (bidding to be tax collectors then extorting and being able to keep the surplus) is something both the medieval and Roman worlds had in common, if memory serves.
Mr. Divvie, The Last Kingdom was one of the few BBC series I liked. Naturally, it was cancelled by the BBC and then joined a streaming service I don't have... hope the ending is a return to form.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
Not surprised; bro-in-law and wife have a holiday property on Anglesey. They go there from central Lancs about twice a month, stopping off at a retail park in S. Lancs or Cheshire for supplies for the trip. All they buy in Anglesey is the occasional meal out and coffees. Then they grumble about the rates. However, they’ve stopped talking to us …. me at any rate ….. about it because I’ve made my critical views clear.
Mr. F, also, tax farming (bidding to be tax collectors then extorting and being able to keep the surplus) is something both the medieval and Roman worlds had in common, if memory serves.
Mr. Divvie, The Last Kingdom was one of the few BBC series I liked. Naturally, it was cancelled by the BBC and then joined a streaming service I don't have... hope the ending is a return to form.
I’ve watched it already. The last series. You and @Theuniondivvie will be pleased to hear it’s jolly good
Its likely even worse than for previous generations because first time buyers are older now than previously.
Add in the issue of student debt and a life of wage slavery beckons.
Subsistence farming and land seizures looking good again?
Don’t joke…
I was generally in favour of more social housing and finding ways to cool/crash the housing market anyway; but I now worry that those of us with a clear line of sight to paying off our mortgage before we are 50 (or those who have already done so) will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. So I really want it done!
Maybe I should join the Communist Party as insurance? If I can work my way up, I might get even more property in my name after the revolution.
Mr. Leon, huzzah! Maybe I'll get some DVDs of it at some point. Although I think House of the Dragon might be next for that. Anyone know how many series are planned for that?
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
I think the materials issue is a consequence of Ukraine and Covid legacy supply chain issues. The answer to labour costs rising is either through cutting the minimum wage (unlikely) or automation. Regarding the latter, the prefab/factory houses idea is a good one but the costs are higher than traditional blockwork construction. The reason developers go for it is certainty and speed rather than cost.
The question is the services - electrical, water, gas. And, I should add*, network. These are where money gets spent and a lot of time on fit out. Throwing up block walls takes very little time. As does covering walls with insulation boards.
*If you are doing a property yourself, hardwire with Cat 6.
Wifi is now good enough for most families, and indeed most companies.
Have fun with installing foil layered insulation in your home. Also, unless your house is tiny, the wifi mesh solutions are rubbish.
I'm reworking a house at the moment. The plan is Cat 6 to every room. With a combined PoE Wifi point/mini switch (4 ethernet sockets) in each room.
Then all you need is a network switch to plug the Cat 6 into....
If you do it while you are building, it costs pretty much nothing. A bit of cable, and an extra socket in each room.
And if you'd hardwired with cat 4 or even cat 5 you'd now be looking at rewiring. I've spent the last couple of decades working for multinational and global tech companies and for office IT they've largely switched to wifi even though their buildings are already cabled.
In proper commercial buildings, with the easy access to cabling? All the places I've worked in the city are hard wirde for the corporate network. WifI is a guest network with no access to real systems....
Cat 6 is good for 10Gbps - that's pretty future proof. You could always lay fibre at the same time, if you want. Running dark fibre is just the cost of a roll of fibre.
Yes, companies who do networking for a living switched to wifi in the past four or five years, despite being in the same cabled buildings. Basically, wifi caught up.
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
A long-awaited spate of dealmaking broke out last night with a flurry of private equity-backed takeover approaches for mid-cap London companies worth more than £6 billion.
Dechra Pharmaceuticals said after the market had closed that it was in talks over a possible £4.6 billion cash bid from EQT, a Swedish private equity firm, in a deal backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
The approach for Dechra came after Network International had confirmed earlier that it had received a “preliminary and conditional” proposal from CVC Capital Partners and Francisco Partners, the private equity firms. Shares in the emerging markets-focused payments company closed up 23.1 per cent, or 56½p, at 300p, valuing the company at £1.6 billion, still below its float price of four years ago.
A wave of bids for London-listed companies from overseas buyers had been expected after the pound weakened last year against the dollar. A poll by Numis, the investment bank, found that 88 per cent of FTSE directors regarded British companies as vulnerable to takeovers, with private equity groups tipped to target medium-sized firms with strong cashflow generation trading at depressed valuations.
These overseas takeovers are bad for the reasons you state, but we should also note in passing that as private equity groups take well-run firms private, shares in those firms are no longer available to pension or savings funds.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
Are they actually aiming to get their house firebombed by locals?
Noone needs two houses, but if you happen to have more than one the decent thing to do is rent it out the whole year (Renters and OOs are passu so far as houses-people ratio is concerned)- having a "holiday home", AirBNB or 'investment property' actively worsens the housing shortage.
MPs do!
Indeed there are a number of other situations where families or individuals need two houses. My father had a flat in Paris in the Eighties when working there, while the rest of the family stayed in England at school etc. I have a friend who lives most of the year in Uganda, but has a flat in Leicester too.
Others live as singles in multi-bed houses. Should they be forcibly down-sized so that an overcrowded family can be rehomed?
Multiple homes is in part a phenomenon of how we live today, but also a feature of how wealth is distributed in our society.
(Incidentally, Rishi isn't probably the best person to spearhead an assault on multiple home ownership!)
Mr. F, also, tax farming (bidding to be tax collectors then extorting and being able to keep the surplus) is something both the medieval and Roman worlds had in common, if memory serves.
Mr. Divvie, The Last Kingdom was one of the few BBC series I liked. Naturally, it was cancelled by the BBC and then joined a streaming service I don't have... hope the ending is a return to form.
I’ve watched it already. The last series. You and @Theuniondivvie will be pleased to hear it’s jolly good
Actually I now read it’s a one off movie, a kind of epilogue to series 1-5. No room for flabby space filling then..
pg22 - the most dramatic period of social and economic collapse in British history/food would have been in short supply
But some had a greater sense of sovereignty. Until dropping dead from starvation and plague.
I almost can't believe we're having this conversation, but starvation was down to a series of poor summers, and plague was down to plague. Neither were consequences of the Romans leaving and more than covid and war in Ukraine were consequences of Brexit.
Correlation <> causation.
I think you can make a case that central organisation in food storage and distribution can make a society more resistant to famine etc. It depends on the government of course, as some governments have either been callous about inflicting famine, or even use it as a weapon.
In the Anglo-Saxon period the Church had a 10% tithe on crops, and priests were from the local village, so had a primitive welfare state. It was when the Church became centralised that the tithes were diverted to support wealthy abbots rather than poor peasants.
The Roman Empire basically practised "trickle up" economics. Lesser landowners extorted from the peasants, while seeking ways to avoid paying tax, like joining town councils. Greater landowners extorted from the lesser, while using their influence to avoid taxes. The imperial bureaucracy extorted from everybody. But, the bureaucrats didn't care where the taxes came from, so long as they got paid. So in practice, the tax burden fell upon the poorest.
So, the lot of a British peasant, in say 350, would not have been a good one. But what they got in place of organised extortion, under the Romans, was disorganised extortion, under British and Saxon warlords, and Irish slave raiders.
pg22 - the most dramatic period of social and economic collapse in British history/food would have been in short supply
But some had a greater sense of sovereignty. Until dropping dead from starvation and plague.
I almost can't believe we're having this conversation, but starvation was down to a series of poor summers, and plague was down to plague. Neither were consequences of the Romans leaving and more than covid and war in Ukraine were consequences of Brexit.
Correlation <> causation.
I think you can make a case that central organisation in food storage and distribution can make a society more resistant to famine etc. It depends on the government of course, as some governments have either been callous about inflicting famine, or even use it as a weapon.
In the Anglo-Saxon period the Church had a 10% tithe on crops, and priests were from the local village, so had a primitive welfare state. It was when the Church became centralised that the tithes were diverted to support wealthy abbots rather than poor peasants.
The research has a diagram which indicates significant volcanic impact on climate around 540, but not much around the late 4th century or early 5th other than an eruption around 434 in the Southern hemisphere.
It pinpoints an eruption around 44 BC around the end of the Roman republic.
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
The mesh systems are rarely suitable for anything. The latency is terrible, the performance loss is hilarious.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
Maybe I should join the Communist Party as insurance? If I can work my way up, I might get even more property in my name after the revolution.
Jessica Mitford's memoir "A fine old conflict" includes an anecdote from her time as US Communist Party treasurer - someone gives them a large sum of money, and Jessica promises anonymity, but the donor says "No, I want you to thank me in writing, so I can cheerfully produce it if you guys win..."
pg22 - the most dramatic period of social and economic collapse in British history/food would have been in short supply
But some had a greater sense of sovereignty. Until dropping dead from starvation and plague.
I almost can't believe we're having this conversation, but starvation was down to a series of poor summers, and plague was down to plague. Neither were consequences of the Romans leaving and more than covid and war in Ukraine were consequences of Brexit.
Correlation <> causation.
I think you can make a case that central organisation in food storage and distribution can make a society more resistant to famine etc. It depends on the government of course, as some governments have either been callous about inflicting famine, or even use it as a weapon.
In the Anglo-Saxon period the Church had a 10% tithe on crops, and priests were from the local village, so had a primitive welfare state. It was when the Church became centralised that the tithes were diverted to support wealthy abbots rather than poor peasants.
Yes, I'll give you that. Though I'd argue that the interest of the Roman Empire in preventing famine among the peasantry in its outer provinces was pretty low.
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
The mesh systems are rarely suitable for anything. The latency is terrible, the performance loss is hilarious.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
I'd agree that wired is best, but a mesh network can be a big improvement over a single access-point/router which is what most people upgrade from.
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
The mesh systems are rarely suitable for anything. The latency is terrible, the performance loss is hilarious.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
I'd agree that wired is best, but a mesh network can be a big improvement over a single access-point/router which is what most people upgrade from.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
It's almost exactly one year since Johnson announced the RN was taking responsibility for the channel bollocks. That, unsurprisingly, was also a pathetic failure.
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
David , you have seen the state of the clowns and crooks running teh country, majority struggle to tie their shoelaces. We are led by donkeys, their pals and relatives etc. When dross like that can get total control of teh country and the great unwashed think they are great it is not hard to see why we are in the crap.
Curiously, Wings is struggling to find any reference to this £110k motorhome in either the accounts or the election expenses: https://wingsoverscotland.com/ It's almost as if they were running 2 sets of accounts.
I think it was accounts lite and the rest in cash to back pocket. How those idiots on the NEC allowed it is incredible. The few with brains who understood they were liable for any missing funds got out and all the thick grifting sockpuppets just followed orders. Only saw mentioned once that it was Surgeon that shut down discussion on the finances as well.
I think picture 2 is the before the sticks were inserted in their anuses and picture 4 is the recommended remedy to follow the same route by a collection of junior Drs
Why do we need a rising population when AI is about to take over millions of jobs?
I know I bang on about this, but it is like some massive cognitive dissonance
The luddites were right that automation reduced demand for labour but very quickly economic growth created more, better jobs. It will probably be the same with AI.
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
David , you have seen the state of the clowns and crooks running teh country, majority struggle to tie their shoelaces. We are led by donkeys, their pals and relatives etc. When dross like that can get total control of teh country and the great unwashed think they are great it is not hard to see why we are in the crap.
Curiously, Wings is struggling to find any reference to this £110k motorhome in either the accounts or the election expenses: https://wingsoverscotland.com/ It's almost as if they were running 2 sets of accounts.
I think it was accounts lite and the rest in cash to back pocket. How those idiots on the NEC allowed it is incredible. The few with brains who understood they were liable for any missing funds got out and all the thick grifting sockpuppets just followed orders. Only saw mentioned once that it was Surgeon that shut down discussion on the finances as well.
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
The mesh systems are rarely suitable for anything. The latency is terrible, the performance loss is hilarious.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
I'd agree that wired is best, but a mesh network can be a big improvement over a single access-point/router which is what most people upgrade from.
It's a question of bandwidth - prior to Wifi 5 (AC) the bands (and bandwidth) available made wifi impractical for large numbers of uses. With Wifi 6 (AX) and especially the new 6E bandwidth isn't such a big problem.
The latest Asus 6E meshes have 11gb to play with across multiple channels and bands with space for a 4000mb dedicated backbone channel - so the wifi world is very different from the older days.
On topic, housing is a bi-partisan cockup in this country - Labour did nothing to build enough houses when they were in power, despite opening the floodgates to anyone in Eastern Europe, and the Conservatives have done nothing for the past twelve years either. And, just as important but never mentioned, neither party has any idea how to build the larger, higher quality homes that are needed, but which the large builder oligopoly completely fails to provide.
Of course, the LibDems, with their focus on ponit-scoring in by-elections, are even worse.
People in their 20s and 30s should of course be demanding change, but few grasp the concepts involved, blaming the wrong people (greedy landlords, etc.)
Starmer wants rid of Angela Rayner. It's no secret, certainly not since he already tried and was stopped from getting shot of the elected deputy leader role.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
Are they actually aiming to get their house firebombed by locals?
Noone needs two houses, but if you happen to have more than one the decent thing to do is rent it out the whole year (Renters and OOs are passu so far as houses-people ratio is concerned)- having a "holiday home", AirBNB or 'investment property' actively worsens the housing shortage.
MPs do!
Indeed there are a number of other situations where families or individuals need two houses. My father had a flat in Paris in the Eighties when working there, while the rest of the family stayed in England at school etc. I have a friend who lives most of the year in Uganda, but has a flat in Leicester too.
Others live as singles in multi-bed houses. Should they be forcibly down-sized so that an overcrowded family can be rehomed?
Multiple homes is in part a phenomenon of how we live today, but also a feature of how wealth is distributed in our society.
(Incidentally, Rishi isn't probably the best person to spearhead an assault on multiple home ownership!)
Unless you're trying to sell it (Probate etc), renting it out the whole year (Or at least trying to) having a "holiday home" in the UK ought to be taxed swingingly. My guess is London Boomers are the worst for it, sitting in their terrace they bought for 1 shilling and 6 back in 1970 now sitting on a million quid of unearned wealth thinking it might be nice to have a bolthole down in Penzance. I don't think MPs need to own a second home - as the job isn't particularly secure and they'll have no need to frequent London (Unless they move there) post MP job they ought to rent.
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
The mesh systems are rarely suitable for anything. The latency is terrible, the performance loss is hilarious.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
I use ethernet-over-power (powerline) to provide wifi and ethernet points around my house. It works fine.
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
Are they actually aiming to get their house firebombed by locals?
Noone needs two houses, but if you happen to have more than one the decent thing to do is rent it out the whole year (Renters and OOs are passu so far as houses-people ratio is concerned)- having a "holiday home", AirBNB or 'investment property' actively worsens the housing shortage.
MPs do!
Indeed there are a number of other situations where families or individuals need two houses. My father had a flat in Paris in the Eighties when working there, while the rest of the family stayed in England at school etc. I have a friend who lives most of the year in Uganda, but has a flat in Leicester too.
Others live as singles in multi-bed houses. Should they be forcibly down-sized so that an overcrowded family can be rehomed?
Multiple homes is in part a phenomenon of how we live today, but also a feature of how wealth is distributed in our society.
(Incidentally, Rishi isn't probably the best person to spearhead an assault on multiple home ownership!)
Unless you're trying to sell it (Probate etc), renting it out the whole year (Or at least trying to) having a "holiday home" in the UK ought to be taxed swingingly. My guess is London Boomers are the worst for it, sitting in their terrace they bought for 1 shilling and 6 back in 1970 now sitting on a million quid of unearned wealth thinking it might be nice to have a bolthole down in Penzance. I don't think MPs need to own a second home - as the job isn't particularly secure and they'll have no need to frequent London (Unless they move there) post MP job they ought to rent.
So you want the cost of MPs to rise and waste even more taxpayers money?
Why do we need a rising population when AI is about to take over millions of jobs?
I know I bang on about this, but it is like some massive cognitive dissonance
The luddites were right that automation reduced demand for labour but very quickly economic growth created more, better jobs. It will probably be the same with AI.
People keep telling me this but no one can ever give an example of the new exciting jobs which will be created, when AI can do basically everything
In the early 1930s when a fairly useful chap called John Maynard Keynes was largely in control of UK economic policy housebuilding was absolutely central to his plans for growth, reducing unemployment and getting the economy moving again. The legacy of that housebuilding is still around us today.
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.
Hmm, rather like the SNP started doing in 2010 or so with council houses in Scotland (and at some point banning further sales to tenants without grandfathered rights). With some useful developments locally, decent though not enormous or luxurious houses. Though more infill on derelict brownfield and similar sites, inevitably not enough to meet the demand, nothing to compare with the major 1920s-30s council schemes, with some very decent houses in generous spaced grounds.
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.
The pressure for new housing is nothing like as great in Scotland because we have not had anything like the same level of immigration. The new building in East Lothian and south Fife has probably been sufficient for much of the country although there are problems for youngsters in the north where second homes are an issue.
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.
Of course, barring the very nicest areas such as Broughty Ferry, the New Town of Edinburgh, and so on, that does mean you and I aren't making so much money as Home Counties folk sitting on our backsides as the houses appreciate in value around us, as I have been realising from a look at the ESPC listings the other day. Which is, on balance, a good thing for the polity.
People with ordinary jobs can't afford to live in Edinburgh unless they flat share. So it is the same problem, albeit applying to just one city.
I noticed the other day the *average* price of a house in Edinburgh as a whole is around 325K or so.
As regards flats in the inner area there is a particular problem in inner Edinburgh - the short let/AirBNB market. Though controls have been brought in. Don't know how much impact they have had.
My brother and his partner have a flat in central Edinburgh. The air bnb situation is out of control there, it causes a lot of problems in terms of antisocial behaviour.
Same in central Brighton. Flats in many blocks, and sometimes whole houses, are being let out to holidaymakers and, frequently, groups on stag/hen weekends, even when leases technically forbid sub-letting. It needs to be tackled, but also needs actual staff to enforce the rules. There aren't any staff, though.
Easy fix - make fhl pay 3 to 5 times council tax and there will be a very big incentive for councils to investigate.
A second home owner from Conwy sends a letter to local butcher objecting to the increase in council tax and will boycott all Welsh businesses as a result
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
Are they actually aiming to get their house firebombed by locals?
Noone needs two houses, but if you happen to have more than one the decent thing to do is rent it out the whole year (Renters and OOs are passu so far as houses-people ratio is concerned)- having a "holiday home", AirBNB or 'investment property' actively worsens the housing shortage.
MPs do!
Indeed there are a number of other situations where families or individuals need two houses. My father had a flat in Paris in the Eighties when working there, while the rest of the family stayed in England at school etc. I have a friend who lives most of the year in Uganda, but has a flat in Leicester too.
Others live as singles in multi-bed houses. Should they be forcibly down-sized so that an overcrowded family can be rehomed?
Multiple homes is in part a phenomenon of how we live today, but also a feature of how wealth is distributed in our society.
(Incidentally, Rishi isn't probably the best person to spearhead an assault on multiple home ownership!)
Unless you're trying to sell it (Probate etc), renting it out the whole year (Or at least trying to) having a "holiday home" in the UK ought to be taxed swingingly. My guess is London Boomers are the worst for it, sitting in their terrace they bought for 1 shilling and 6 back in 1970 now sitting on a million quid of unearned wealth thinking it might be nice to have a bolthole down in Penzance. I don't think MPs need to own a second home - as the job isn't particularly secure and they'll have no need to frequent London (Unless they move there) post MP job they ought to rent.
So you want the cost of MPs to rise and waste even more taxpayers money?
I remember a story recently that now MPs aren't allowed to use their expenses to buy a property in London, some have instead purchased a BTL property and are renting it out to a fellow MP.
I think it was someone on here who suggested that the best approach would be to build a large tower block and house all MPs who need accommodation in London in it.
Why do we need a rising population when AI is about to take over millions of jobs?
I know I bang on about this, but it is like some massive cognitive dissonance
The luddites were right that automation reduced demand for labour but very quickly economic growth created more, better jobs. It will probably be the same with AI.
People keep telling me this but no one can ever give an example of the new exciting jobs which will be created, when AI can do basically everything
That's a fair point, but that would also probably have been true at the time of the Luddites.
Also, there is nothing that would benefit the UK more than significant and rapid depopulation. Rewild the north. Knock down Wolverhampton and Slough and Luton. Return them to forests and wolves. Clean our rivers of chicken shit - we won’t need 70m people to feed. The young will easily buy houses in nice places. Etc
I deal with housing in a professional context. 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.
An interesting different perspective. I would be more than happy if housing targets are abolished and replaced with something better that facilitates more housebuilding than the current set up. But we cannot afford a slow down in construction for a whole variety of reasons both macro and need based.
Yes but I think that the slowdown in construction will happen anyway because of excessive build costs. This is something I will keep bringing up so sorry if I am boring people. There is currently a disproportionate rise in the cost of building houses due increases material and labour costs and the compliance with new regulation (largely environmental based). The experience of the last recession is that new build development will just stop completely in large parts of the country because there is no profit in it, the industry will be mothballed. In Housing targets just fade in to irrelevance in this context. This is a political debate concentrated in the south east and home counties.
So how do we improve supply of materials and reduce costs? So many of the trees we grow seem to end up producing pellets for biofuels but surely we can redirect timber to construction with the right incentives. Why is it so hard to make bricks at a profit in this country? This is something the government should be looking at. I agree the new housebuilding I want has to be profitable.
David , you have seen the state of the clowns and crooks running teh country, majority struggle to tie their shoelaces. We are led by donkeys, their pals and relatives etc. When dross like that can get total control of teh country and the great unwashed think they are great it is not hard to see why we are in the crap.
Curiously, Wings is struggling to find any reference to this £110k motorhome in either the accounts or the election expenses: https://wingsoverscotland.com/ It's almost as if they were running 2 sets of accounts.
I think it was accounts lite and the rest in cash to back pocket. How those idiots on the NEC allowed it is incredible. The few with brains who understood they were liable for any missing funds got out and all the thick grifting sockpuppets just followed orders. Only saw mentioned once that it was Surgeon that shut down discussion on the finances as well.
Sturgeon could end up in chokey for this
Indeed. For the sake of a motorhome she can't even drive. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.)
I'd suspect that their Wifi solution is actually quite close to mine - access points on a hardwire backbone. The mesh systems are plain unreliable, once you get a number of devices trying to connect.
Yes I'd be suprised if they are running a Wi-Fi mesh, which is really only suitable for homes, rather than wired access points.
The mesh systems are rarely suitable for anything. The latency is terrible, the performance loss is hilarious.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
I use ethernet-over-power (powerline) to provide wifi and ethernet points around my house. It works fine.
Among other problems, they are often hilariously insecure.
Governments can set whatever house targets they can pluck out of their arses, but there is one truth they can't deny. In this country, we don't have anywhere near enough skilled trades people to build 'em. Successive Governments have encouraged university over apprenticeships, steered our youth into easy, comfortable jobs rather than getting their hands dirty building something. Another factor is a stupid focus on creating narrow expertise jobs. Years ago, a chippy would be a general purpose wood butcher, in at the very start doing shuttering for the foundations to the very end doing second fixing of skirting and architrave. Now we have different trades for different tasks. Window fitters don't touch anything else, a roofer won't fancy doing architrave. There is a massive construction skills desert in this country, and we just don't encourage people to go into the trade.
At current trade rates it should not be a problem enticing young people to go into these trades with a higher starting salary...
I have long thought many who feel peer pressure to go to university would be far better taking an apprenticeship and learning while earning
I hear labour's grand idea of spending 28 billion a year over 5 years insulating 19 million homes but this is another promise that is undeliverable..
If we'd done that before the Ukraine energy price spike, that might actually have paid for itself.
Apparently there are 60 million credit cards in UK
Is that surprising? I have 3 just myself.
A year or so back I was talking to Romanian woman who had been refused credit cards despite having a steady, if not highly-paid, job as a shop assistant. Perhaps being Romanian did not help, but prejudiced or not, computer said no. 60 million credit cards spread amongst 40 to 50 million adults leaves room for a lot of cash punters.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
Its hardly a surprise: Rwanda can't take more than a handful Deportation flights in general get checked by courts These deportation flights specifically pull more legal red flags than any other To deport them you have to detain them and we have nowhere secure to do so We still haven't resourced the Home Office to process asylum claims real or bogus We still haven't resourced the police to go and nick people who abscond We still haven't signed bilateral agreements with almost everywhere to send back home
But we did have a lovely sign on a lectern, great headlines and supportive media stories. Which is nice.
A long-awaited spate of dealmaking broke out last night with a flurry of private equity-backed takeover approaches for mid-cap London companies worth more than £6 billion.
Dechra Pharmaceuticals said after the market had closed that it was in talks over a possible £4.6 billion cash bid from EQT, a Swedish private equity firm, in a deal backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
The approach for Dechra came after Network International had confirmed earlier that it had received a “preliminary and conditional” proposal from CVC Capital Partners and Francisco Partners, the private equity firms. Shares in the emerging markets-focused payments company closed up 23.1 per cent, or 56½p, at 300p, valuing the company at £1.6 billion, still below its float price of four years ago.
A wave of bids for London-listed companies from overseas buyers had been expected after the pound weakened last year against the dollar. A poll by Numis, the investment bank, found that 88 per cent of FTSE directors regarded British companies as vulnerable to takeovers, with private equity groups tipped to target medium-sized firms with strong cashflow generation trading at depressed valuations.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
There was always a decent chance that would happen.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
The truth which no one wants to speak is that, there is no way to control immigration once people are in the country.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
But that would be national suicide of a different kind. There are 2 billion people who would like to live in the UK. Once word gets out we’ve simply bothered trying to stop people getting in, and we let you stay once you’re here, then they will come
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
There was always a decent chance that would happen.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
The truth which no one wants to speak is that, there is no way to control immigration once people are in the country.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
But that would be national suicide of a different kind. There are 2 billion people who would like to live in the UK. Once word gets out we’ve simply bothered trying to stop people getting in, and we let you stay once you’re here, then they will come
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
Indeed thats the crux of the matter.
Either we go fully fascist, (ie deportation regardless of circumstances, no asylum hearings etc etc) or we try to set up fortress UK stopping people getting in in the first place, or we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.
Also, there is nothing that would benefit the UK more than significant and rapid depopulation. Rewild the north. Knock down Wolverhampton and Slough and Luton. Return them to forests and wolves. Clean our rivers of chicken shit - we won’t need 70m people to feed. The young will easily buy houses in nice places. Etc
Erm, that is a description of present-day Luton, as anyone who has walked from the Airport to the Parkway Station will have experienced for themselves.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
There was always a decent chance that would happen.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
The truth which no one wants to speak is that, there is no way to control immigration once people are in the country.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
But that would be national suicide of a different kind. There are 2 billion people who would like to live in the UK. Once word gets out we’ve simply bothered trying to stop people getting in, and we let you stay once you’re here, then they will come
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
Indeed thats the crux of the matter.
Either we go fully fascist, (ie deportation regardless of circumstances, no asylum hearings etc etc) or we try to set up fortress UK stopping people getting in in the first place, or we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.
I can't see any alternatives.
How long is the area of beach where the boat people actually arrive ?
Margate to Eastbourne ? Dungeness to Dover ? Does anyone rock up in Falmouth ?
Dr. Foxy, Britannia went absolutely backwards when the Romans left. The de-urbanisation was not a matter of success and choice, as fear and consequence.
London was briefly replaced/surpassed by Londonwic[sp], a little along the river. This was in Anglo-Saxon times, if memory serves, but the Viking threat meant it was easier to return to London and repair the walls for safety.
Also, the absence of the Romans led to a massive collapse in both trade and coinage.
Hm. I'm loathe to quibble with you on matters of ancient history, as I know this is a specialist area of yours. But.
While I'd agree that to outward appearances Britannia went backwards - de-urbanisation, etc. - I'd argue that the picture is a little more ambiguous. If you were outside of society's elite - as most people were - the departure of the Romans lifted quite an onerous burden of taxation (by whatever means) and perhaps increased your quality of life. And while the threat of raids grew, for most villages peace remained common - and it's not as if the Romans had ever been that good at preventing raids anyway.
History reports a sense of living in a time of after the fall - but I suspect that is partly because history was written by the urban classes, for whom decline was visible. But was yer average peasant better off before or after Roman occupation? My guess is after (plague and crop failure aside). Even many bigwigs would have been better off post-Rome as they were under the Roman yoke, when their bigwiggery was by design temporary, with the Roman empire inheriting half of what they owned until family wealth dwindled away. (Of course, it would in many cases have been different bigwigs.)
Possibly the main source of misery in the early middle ages was crop failure and plague - but that wasn't really down to who was in charge, if anyone.
There was probably a sweet spot, when the British were spared the cost of maintaining the legions and imperial civil service, but before the raids and civil strife began.
But, ultimately, the breakdown of trade meant that all kinds of goods that could be cheaply mass-produced like tiles and pottery, had to be homemade, and that communities had to become entirely self-sufficient, rather than being able to specialise. Bryan Ward Perkins and Brett Devereaux demonstrate convincingly (at least to me) that Western European living standards took a dive after 400. They say the archaeological evidence shows that diets gradually got worse, and livestock grew smaller.
"We send Rome 350 million denarii a week..."
Painted on the side of a chariot.
PB pedantry: it's libri, surely, and on a currus - chariot is for only 2 folk.
.@GMB poll Final Result shows 83% of the public stands in solidarity with the junior doctors' striking for fair pay and a safer NHS.
Do you support the Drs Strike?
Yes 83%
No 17%
Sunak and Starmer are with the 17%
Saw a Lab MP sneering at those on the Picket Line this morning "There is a performative element to these pickets" Solidarity is a foreign concept clearly.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
There was always a decent chance that would happen.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
The truth which no one wants to speak is that, there is no way to control immigration once people are in the country.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
But that would be national suicide of a different kind. There are 2 billion people who would like to live in the UK. Once word gets out we’ve simply bothered trying to stop people getting in, and we let you stay once you’re here, then they will come
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
Indeed thats the crux of the matter.
Either we go fully fascist, (ie deportation regardless of circumstances, no asylum hearings etc etc) or we try to set up fortress UK stopping people getting in in the first place, or we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.
I can't see any alternatives.
How long is the area of beach where the boat people actually arrive ?
Margate to Eastbourne ? Dungeness to Dover ?
Broadly the Rye/Camber sands area to Hythe/Folkestone. Further west the crossing's too long, then from Dover on you have cliffs until you get near Thanet when, again, the length of crossing becomes an issue.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
The problem is that the building cost of a property is roughly what it sells for, plus a few percent.
Crash house prices, and it won't be profitable to build. Not unless construction costs collapse alongside.
50% of the cost of building is labour. Roughly.
Guess what much of the salary of builders goes on?
British house building is incredibly inefficient compared to elsewhere though./
Separately - crash house prices and the real impact would be felt in the price of land with a chance of planning permission.
I think that's the wrong way round. Sort out the supply of building land, and the rest follows, without the economic dislocation implied by crashing house prices.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
Show me the politician who can do that and I'll show you a genius, a saint, or a fool.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
The problem is that the building cost of a property is roughly what it sells for, plus a few percent.
Crash house prices, and it won't be profitable to build. Not unless construction costs collapse alongside.
50% of the cost of building is labour. Roughly.
Guess what much of the salary of builders goes on?
British house building is incredibly inefficient compared to elsewhere though./
(Snip)
Part of the problem is the sort of houses people want to buy in Britain are inefficient to build.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
There was always a decent chance that would happen.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
The truth which no one wants to speak is that, there is no way to control immigration once people are in the country.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
But that would be national suicide of a different kind. There are 2 billion people who would like to live in the UK. Once word gets out we’ve simply bothered trying to stop people getting in, and we let you stay once you’re here, then they will come
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
Indeed thats the crux of the matter.
Either we go fully fascist, (ie deportation regardless of circumstances, no asylum hearings etc etc) or we try to set up fortress UK stopping people getting in in the first place, or we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.
I can't see any alternatives.
But you’re in denial as well. The last sentence makes no sense
“we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.”
= we accept we can’t control immigration and instead just try to control it
Dr. Foxy, Britannia went absolutely backwards when the Romans left. The de-urbanisation was not a matter of success and choice, as fear and consequence.
London was briefly replaced/surpassed by Londonwic[sp], a little along the river. This was in Anglo-Saxon times, if memory serves, but the Viking threat meant it was easier to return to London and repair the walls for safety.
Also, the absence of the Romans led to a massive collapse in both trade and coinage.
Hm. I'm loathe to quibble with you on matters of ancient history, as I know this is a specialist area of yours. But.
While I'd agree that to outward appearances Britannia went backwards - de-urbanisation, etc. - I'd argue that the picture is a little more ambiguous. If you were outside of society's elite - as most people were - the departure of the Romans lifted quite an onerous burden of taxation (by whatever means) and perhaps increased your quality of life. And while the threat of raids grew, for most villages peace remained common - and it's not as if the Romans had ever been that good at preventing raids anyway.
History reports a sense of living in a time of after the fall - but I suspect that is partly because history was written by the urban classes, for whom decline was visible. But was yer average peasant better off before or after Roman occupation? My guess is after (plague and crop failure aside). Even many bigwigs would have been better off post-Rome as they were under the Roman yoke, when their bigwiggery was by design temporary, with the Roman empire inheriting half of what they owned until family wealth dwindled away. (Of course, it would in many cases have been different bigwigs.)
Possibly the main source of misery in the early middle ages was crop failure and plague - but that wasn't really down to who was in charge, if anyone.
There was probably a sweet spot, when the British were spared the cost of maintaining the legions and imperial civil service, but before the raids and civil strife began.
But, ultimately, the breakdown of trade meant that all kinds of goods that could be cheaply mass-produced like tiles and pottery, had to be homemade, and that communities had to become entirely self-sufficient, rather than being able to specialise. Bryan Ward Perkins and Brett Devereaux demonstrate convincingly (at least to me) that Western European living standards took a dive after 400. They say the archaeological evidence shows that diets gradually got worse, and livestock grew smaller.
"We send Rome 350 million denarii a week..."
Painted on the side of a chariot.
PB pedantry: it's libri, surely, and on a currus - chariot is for only 2 folk.
Did they have battle buses back then ?
Boudicca and the Britons did - but chariot size, and more like FV432 than Marder IFV - rock up to battle in them and then get out while the driver and crewman did what damage he could also.
Does anywhere else in the world offer an instant hotel room for anyone who rocks up on their shores ?
The Libyans even go out of their way to find guests.
Better yet, under Libyan law, undocumented foreigners can be punished with hard labour. So the hotel guests get to work for the local farmers for free.
No, to be fair she's having a go at people uninvolved turning up at picket lines. It's a debate that goes back to the old flying picket days. She's not attacking strikes per se.
If the plan is to build enough houses to significantly reduce house prices in the Home Counties, then the policy is to transfer a massive amount of wealth from existing homeowners to housing developers. It's not surprising it arouses opposition.
It's completely bonkers that a non-productive asset is seen as a great investment by so many people, and we even celebrate the prices going up! I'd vote for almost anyone who could bring house prices crashing down and get people off of the "my house is my pension" mindset. It's an insane way to run an economy.
Show me the politician who can do that and I'll show you a genius, a saint, or a fool.
The thing is it probably is long term a very solid investment. I mean you immediately get rid of a rental cost, accrue equity every month - and that's with prices standing still. Even if you're not a NIMBY yourself you know there'll be enough other NIMBYs about to do the dirty work of council objections etc to keep your house price up; in addition even if you do have new houses being built nearby once the fancy flags are off the newbuilds nearby you know those houses are going to be smaller for the money and drop in value relative to the existing stock after a few years.
This is the most pathetic failure. No getting round it
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
There was always a decent chance that would happen.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
The truth which no one wants to speak is that, there is no way to control immigration once people are in the country.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
But that would be national suicide of a different kind. There are 2 billion people who would like to live in the UK. Once word gets out we’ve simply bothered trying to stop people getting in, and we let you stay once you’re here, then they will come
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
Indeed thats the crux of the matter.
Either we go fully fascist, (ie deportation regardless of circumstances, no asylum hearings etc etc) or we try to set up fortress UK stopping people getting in in the first place, or we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.
I can't see any alternatives.
Make working with out a documented right to work here impossible, and suddenly the attractiveness will fade.
See my idea for £100K fines, with half going to the undocumented worker who gives evidence. Plus indefinite leave to remain.
Dr. Foxy, Britannia went absolutely backwards when the Romans left. The de-urbanisation was not a matter of success and choice, as fear and consequence.
London was briefly replaced/surpassed by Londonwic[sp], a little along the river. This was in Anglo-Saxon times, if memory serves, but the Viking threat meant it was easier to return to London and repair the walls for safety.
Also, the absence of the Romans led to a massive collapse in both trade and coinage.
Hm. I'm loathe to quibble with you on matters of ancient history, as I know this is a specialist area of yours. But.
While I'd agree that to outward appearances Britannia went backwards - de-urbanisation, etc. - I'd argue that the picture is a little more ambiguous. If you were outside of society's elite - as most people were - the departure of the Romans lifted quite an onerous burden of taxation (by whatever means) and perhaps increased your quality of life. And while the threat of raids grew, for most villages peace remained common - and it's not as if the Romans had ever been that good at preventing raids anyway.
History reports a sense of living in a time of after the fall - but I suspect that is partly because history was written by the urban classes, for whom decline was visible. But was yer average peasant better off before or after Roman occupation? My guess is after (plague and crop failure aside). Even many bigwigs would have been better off post-Rome as they were under the Roman yoke, when their bigwiggery was by design temporary, with the Roman empire inheriting half of what they owned until family wealth dwindled away. (Of course, it would in many cases have been different bigwigs.)
Possibly the main source of misery in the early middle ages was crop failure and plague - but that wasn't really down to who was in charge, if anyone.
There was probably a sweet spot, when the British were spared the cost of maintaining the legions and imperial civil service, but before the raids and civil strife began.
But, ultimately, the breakdown of trade meant that all kinds of goods that could be cheaply mass-produced like tiles and pottery, had to be homemade, and that communities had to become entirely self-sufficient, rather than being able to specialise. Bryan Ward Perkins and Brett Devereaux demonstrate convincingly (at least to me) that Western European living standards took a dive after 400. They say the archaeological evidence shows that diets gradually got worse, and livestock grew smaller.
"We send Rome 350 million denarii a week..."
Painted on the side of a chariot.
PB pedantry: it's libri, surely, and on a currus - chariot is for only 2 folk.
Did they have battle buses back then ?
Boudicca and the Britons did - but chariot size, and more like FV432 than Marder IFV - rock up to battle in them and then get out while the driver and crewman did what damage he could also.
I thought there was mixed evidence, still, on whether actual mounted chariot charges were a thing in Britain.
No mention of SNP on Sturgeon’s bio. But maybe there never was?
Could be if it is part of one's work as MP or MSP and therefore on expenses. Constituency offices, at least in Scotland, aren't allowed to show party affiliation if they are being paid for as exes.
Comments
Some local people discovered they were talking to property developers about luxury flats on the site and the council did their famous impression of a small boy, caught with the jam jar in his hand, with his face covered in jam, denying any responsibility for a jam shortfall.
Since then, crickets.
Its likely even worse than for previous generations because first time buyers are older now than previously.
Add in the issue of student debt and a life of wage slavery beckons.
Crash house prices, and it won't be profitable to build. Not unless construction costs collapse alongside.
https://tinyurl.com/newhouses1 Barrat housing (Picture is before kick off)
https://tinyurl.com/newhouses2 Gleeson development
https://tinyurl.com/newhouses3 Keepmoat
https://tinyurl.com/newhouses4 Avant
Think about a thousand houses between those 4 developments. The completed Avant is by far the smallest.
Local opinion backs the policy as second home ownership in North Wales is a big problem
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/couple-who-second-home-stop-26656201
Cat 6 is good for 10Gbps - that's pretty future proof. You could always lay fibre at the same time, if you want. Running dark fibre is just the cost of a roll of fibre.
Guess what much of the salary of builders goes on?
Separately - crash house prices and the real impact would be felt in the price of land with a chance of planning permission.
So, the lot of a British peasant, in say 350, would not have been a good one. But what they got in place of organised extortion, under the Romans, was disorganised extortion, under British and Saxon warlords, and Irish slave raiders.
But it is a remarkably arrogant letter, not least because English councils are also moving in that direction.
Hundreds of millions spent to deport ZERO people
Mr. Divvie, The Last Kingdom was one of the few BBC series I liked. Naturally, it was cancelled by the BBC and then joined a streaming service I don't have... hope the ending is a return to form.
Then they grumble about the rates.
However, they’ve stopped talking to us …. me at any rate ….. about it because I’ve made my critical views clear.
I was generally in favour of more social housing and finding ways to cool/crash the housing market anyway; but I now worry that those of us with a clear line of sight to paying off our mortgage before we are 50 (or those who have already done so) will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. So I really want it done!
Maybe I should join the Communist Party as insurance? If I can work my way up, I might get even more property in my name after the revolution.
Indeed there are a number of other situations where families or individuals need two houses. My father had a flat in Paris in the Eighties when working there, while the rest of the family stayed in England at school etc. I have a friend who lives most of the year in Uganda, but has a flat in Leicester too.
Others live as singles in multi-bed houses. Should they be forcibly down-sized so that an overcrowded family can be rehomed?
Multiple homes is in part a phenomenon of how we live today, but also a feature of how wealth is distributed in our society.
(Incidentally, Rishi isn't probably the best person to spearhead an assault on multiple home ownership!)
I know I bang on about this, but it is like some massive cognitive dissonance
The research has a diagram which indicates significant volcanic impact on climate around 540, but not much around the late 4th century or early 5th other than an eruption around 434 in the Southern hemisphere.
It pinpoints an eruption around 44 BC around the end of the Roman republic.
Then number of people I know who have spent a pile on ethernet-over-power and all kinds of gimmicks to try and improve mesh setups......
Just run a wire from each access point back to the router. Theses days, the router modem the installers give you have 4 ethernet sockets on them, as standard. You don't even need a switch, in most cases, though you will need to have local power for the access points.
Damn stupid to spend and promise so much without getting legal ducks lined up.
a) Roman Tax Collectors
b) Saxons
c) Vikings
Wired is
d) None of the above
https://www.q-mag.org/germany-a-danger-of-volcanic-eruptions.html
Only saw mentioned once that it was Surgeon that shut down discussion on the finances as well.
https://twitter.com/RedCollectiveUK/status/1646594167546564621/photo/2
The latest Asus 6E meshes have 11gb to play with across multiple channels and bands with space for a 4000mb dedicated backbone channel - so the wifi world is very different from the older days.
Of course, the LibDems, with their focus on ponit-scoring in by-elections, are even worse.
People in their 20s and 30s should of course be demanding change, but few grasp the concepts involved, blaming the wrong people (greedy landlords, etc.)
So no change here I think.
I don't think MPs need to own a second home - as the job isn't particularly secure and they'll have no need to frequent London (Unless they move there) post MP job they ought to rent.
I suspect i probably have 8 at the moment including 3 I've abused to do balance transfers that I will close and reopen in a few months / years time.
I think it was someone on here who suggested that the best approach would be to build a large tower block and house all MPs who need accommodation in London in it.
We are not going to deport large numbers of people. Certainly nothing near compared with people arriving.
We should be honest, bite the bullet, and just give everyone currently in the country leave to remain.
Of course, that would be electoral suicide, so we get posturing and stunts which are only designed for the media.
Rwanda can't take more than a handful
Deportation flights in general get checked by courts
These deportation flights specifically pull more legal red flags than any other
To deport them you have to detain them and we have nowhere secure to do so
We still haven't resourced the Home Office to process asylum claims real or bogus
We still haven't resourced the police to go and nick people who abscond
We still haven't signed bilateral agreements with almost everywhere to send back home
But we did have a lovely sign on a lectern, great headlines and supportive media stories. Which is nice.
That's one of the downsides of Thatcherite free market dogma in a world which certainly does not reciprocate.
The problem is HMG is simply too spineless to try the brutal methods that might actually work - and save lives and prevent strife further down the line
SNP's failure to suspend Peter Murrell may be 'unlawful', says MP
Either we go fully fascist, (ie deportation regardless of circumstances, no asylum hearings etc etc) or we try to set up fortress UK stopping people getting in in the first place, or we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.
I can't see any alternatives.
Margate to Eastbourne ?
Dungeness to Dover ?
Does anyone rock up in Falmouth ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX4J4p4R1QU
Do you support the Drs Strike?
Yes 83%
No 17%
Sunak and Starmer are with the 17%
Saw a Lab MP sneering at those on the Picket Line this morning "There is a performative element to these pickets" Solidarity is a foreign concept clearly.
What has Labour become.
Sort out the supply of building land, and the rest follows, without the economic dislocation implied by crashing house prices.
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1646772022360395776
“we accept we can't really control immigration and try to just limit it to an acceptable level.”
= we accept we can’t control immigration and instead just try to control it
Better yet, under Libyan law, undocumented foreigners can be punished with hard labour. So the hotel guests get to work for the local farmers for free.
Even if you're not a NIMBY yourself you know there'll be enough other NIMBYs about to do the dirty work of council objections etc to keep your house price up; in addition even if you do have new houses being built nearby once the fancy flags are off the newbuilds nearby you know those houses are going to be smaller for the money and drop in value relative to the existing stock after a few years.
See my idea for £100K fines, with half going to the undocumented worker who gives evidence. Plus indefinite leave to remain.
“Something is afoot! Prominent SNP members excepting Yousaf have removed all references to the SNP from their twitter bio’s. Now why would that be???”
https://twitter.com/macnahgalla/status/1646768014426091522?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
No mention of SNP on Sturgeon’s bio. But maybe there never was?