I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
But doesn't your second point beg the answer to your first? If restricted immigration is a good, why did the government increase it, specifically after Brexit? Bearing in mind it has an interest in Brexit being a success?
My view FWIW is that while some classes.of workers did see increased real wages for a while, ultimately wages are what is afforded by the economy. If you burden the economy you limit what can be afforded.
Ukraine and Hong Kong are both anomalies in this year’s numbers. Also with student numbers, which have risen after pandemic-related deferrals.
Family migration has also increased as people are finding loopholes around May's effective restrictions due to a low income threshhold. And worker immigration has rocketed due to a big expansion of the "shortage" list plus a low salary restriction on the non-shortage list.
What's wrong with family migration? Supporting families is a good thing.
Not if the families in question are shipping over 18 year old arranged brides from the sub-continent. Or people that the taxpayer is going to have to subsidize for the next 50 years.
People should be allowed to marry who they want. Immigrants are also taxpayers, and they are IMHO entitled to the same kind of family life as anyone else.
So net migration of 700,000. That’s three Milton Keyneses.
How many housing units were completed last year?
Totally unsustainable. This will lead to a populist backlash eventually.
I assume the government chooses more immigration because it thinks it necessary. Noteworthy the big increase started after Brexit. Did Brexit make immigration more necessary?
I assume the government chooses more immigration because the political pain in restricting immigration is greater than the political pain in not restricting it. The trying-to-restrict-immigration-is-bad lobby seem rather more powerful than the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby.
I think this is right, but why has the balance changed from the second lobby to the first, which seems to be linked with Brexit? Is that because the economic damage of Brexit means the government feels compelled to use an immigration lever available to it? Or does the political failure of the Brexit project weaken the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby?
Add I don't expect this policy to change under Labour.
A really simple solution to immigration. Link number of people allowed to immigrate to number of new homes built in any given year. No new homes, no more immigrants.
Fwiw, I am not bothered by 1m new immigrants in the slightest if enough homes and infrastructure (schools, hospitals etc) can be built to support them.
Immigration should be directly linked to capacity of housing and other key services, and this should be a quota enshrined in law.
So your solution is to make the labour market as flexible and responsive as planning departments? I might see a flaw in this idea.
The opposite. If immigration of 1m-ish a year is imperative to the economy as people seem to think it is, the archaic and outdated 1947 planning laws would have to be abolished and replaced with something that would allow the rapid development of UK housing capacity and related infrastructure.
Hmm, as I mentioned the other day the next village down from me is currently having 450 houses built - it's population is given as 2,607 according to Google. So it is certainly possible as it's happening near me.
Back in 2021 there was a referendum passed in the parish
“Do you want Bassetlaw District Council to use the Neighbourhood Plan for Hodsock and Langold to help it decide planning applications in the neighbourhood area?” by 414 votes "Yes" to 81 "No"
The new housing currently being built is clearly shown on page 26 of the neighbourhood plan.
This certainly seems contrary to @HYUFD anecdotes of stopping every bit of development to be re-elected as a councillor !
Has anyone else's relevant council for housing/planning followed this path ?
An interesting example of neighbourhood planning, thanks for sharing this. There is definite regional variation over this issue, as a general rule this is a particularly acute political problem in the Home Counties. A big part of it is that those opposed to change have lots of time on their hands and their opinions then come to dominate local politics. Also, given that developers have a bad reputation generally and often make a massive mess, people feel reluctant to support them.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Same in the US, who conspicuously have not Brexited.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Going for the easy likes? Tut!
Wage rises? Remind me what food inflation is currently running at?
Horse's "Labour on the verge of a 30 point lead" posts a few months ago were top ten contenders. I'd be surprised if Leon didn't come in with an impressive nine out of the top ten, mind.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Isn’t Kemi on the case , the alleged saviour of the Tory party !
Yes, but can she hold a jewelled sword while dressed like a character from Star Trek? We are informed that that is the key thing to look for in a leader.
I thought the gold wheat motif on blue showed support for Ukraine tbh.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Going for the easy likes? Tut!
Wage rises? Remind me what food inflation is currently running at?
That the wage rises are barely keeping up with inflation is also a fact. It is one the major forces driving the inflation, even as energy prices are dropping back.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Nigel Farage is not on the TV all the time
He's still the conscience of the nation.
Nicotine stained finger still on the aged faltering valetudinarian pulse of the nation.
That dam busters dog story feels like it could become ground zero for the British culture war, it's not surprising that Farage is all over it like a nasty rash. I feel certain it is going to provide the most exquisite entertainment.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Going for the easy likes? Tut!
Wage rises? Remind me what food inflation is currently running at?
UK: Food inflation 19%, wages up by 6% Germany: Food inflation 22%, wages up by 3%
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Same in the US, who conspicuously have not Brexited.
My personal guesstimate is that many people in such low end jobs are not adventurous by nature. COVID forced people to change jobs - companies closed, and in zero hours world, the hours for many went to…. Zero.
So many people have been forced to find new jobs and in many cases, better ones.
Just been to Saint Vincent cathedral in Saint Malo - the first I’ve been to at a sensible hour so I could actually go inside. It’s far from the most impressive I’ve seen, but rather remarkable given the state it was in in 1945. I think I might go to the service there tomorrow evening
I’ve now found a nice little wine bar where I’m very much enjoying some oysters with a glass of Pouilly-Fumé
This is so much more like holiday than the walking!
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Nigel Farage is not on the TV all the time
He's still the conscience of the nation.
Nicotine stained finger still on the aged faltering valetudinarian pulse of the nation.
That dam busters dog story feels like it could become ground zero for the British culture war, it's not surprising that Farage is all over it like a nasty rash. I feel certain it is going to provide the most exquisite entertainment.
The myriad ways some people are dancing about the proposition that it should be ok to use the word n***er without actually saying it is already entertaining in a grim kind of way.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Isn’t Kemi on the case , the alleged saviour of the Tory party !
Yes, but can she hold a jewelled sword while dressed like a character from Star Trek? We are informed that that is the key thing to look for in a leader.
I thought the gold wheat motif on blue showed support for Ukraine tbh.
It was a coronation. The king looked a complete prat, his wife looked a complete prat, the ABoC looked a complere prat. Fancy dress was the order of the day. That's kind of the point. Though personally I though Penny in her outfit looked more like a monarch than Chas in his.
Immigration is something which the Tories have unwisely shackled themselves to.
There are a large number of pollsters, with quite a range of systematic biases, which increases the chances of seeing abnormal leads in one direction or the other, but I don't see the circumstances for a 30-point lead, absent the sort of Trussite disaster that produced a monumental shock.
Worth remembering that, even in the midst of a major banking crisis, the largest Tory lead over Labour before the 2010GE was 28%. And the nadir of Labour polling under Corbyn, polling so bad that it convinced Theresa May to call an early general election, even that was only 25% behind.
So political parties can be incredibly unpopular, but not be thirty points behind. Truss' tenure as PM really was so epically catastrophic that she took polling deficits to extreme scales.
For Sunak to plumb those depths over immigration he would have to fly to Calais in order to bring migrants back to Britain with him in his expensively chartered private jet. It's not going to happen.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Going for the easy likes? Tut!
Wage rises? Remind me what food inflation is currently running at?
UK: Food inflation 19%, wages up by 6% Germany: Food inflation 22%, wages up by 3%
Less bad is a kind of good.
An impressive industrial relations statistic from a Social Democrat led coalition government. Lib-Labs take note.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Nigel Farage is not on the TV all the time
He's still the conscience of the nation.
Nicotine stained finger still on the aged faltering valetudinarian pulse of the nation.
That dam busters dog story feels like it could become ground zero for the British culture war, it's not surprising that Farage is all over it like a nasty rash. I feel certain it is going to provide the most exquisite entertainment.
It's not like the MoD are going to chuck N*****'s skeleton into the sea at Skeggy. They are moving it to Marham to be with the Hole in the Wall Gang which makes a sort of sense. The gammons are going be more livid if they leave it at Scampton and a fugee shits on it or something when the joint becomes an asylum centre.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Same in the US, who conspicuously have not Brexited.
My personal guesstimate is that many people in such low end jobs are not adventurous by nature. COVID forced people to change jobs - companies closed, and in zero hours world, the hours for many went to…. Zero.
So many people have been forced to find new jobs and in many cases, better ones.
And many people just decided not to work any more, or at least for a while. Again, anecdotage, but I know a few who simply retired early, or took personal time with family for an extended period.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Nigel Farage is not on the TV all the time
He's still the conscience of the nation.
Nicotine stained finger still on the aged faltering valetudinarian pulse of the nation.
That dam busters dog story feels like it could become ground zero for the British culture war, it's not surprising that Farage is all over it like a nasty rash. I feel certain it is going to provide the most exquisite entertainment.
The myriad ways some people are dancing about the proposition that it should be ok to use the word n***er without actually saying it is already entertaining in a grim kind of way.
Not so entertaining is the way they are guaranteeing that the modern generations will fail to grasp the heroism and self-sacrifice of the crews, and the work of the many behind them, obscured by this shit-screen being sprayed.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Isn’t Kemi on the case , the alleged saviour of the Tory party !
Yes, but can she hold a jewelled sword while dressed like a character from Star Trek? We are informed that that is the key thing to look for in a leader.
I thought the gold wheat motif on blue showed support for Ukraine tbh.
I think she looks like a fight attendant with Kazakhstan Airlines. I have never flown with Kazakhstan Airlines but I imagine the cabin crew with a uniform somewhat like that.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
Your contention is that Brexit has caused a long term boost in low-skill wages. You seem to be walking back from that.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Nigel Farage is not on the TV all the time
He's still the conscience of the nation.
Nicotine stained finger still on the aged faltering valetudinarian pulse of the nation.
That dam busters dog story feels like it could become ground zero for the British culture war, it's not surprising that Farage is all over it like a nasty rash. I feel certain it is going to provide the most exquisite entertainment.
It's not like the MoD are going to chuck N*****'s skeleton into the sea at Skeggy. They are moving it to Marham to be with the Hole in the Wall Gang which makes a sort of sense. The gammons are going be more livid if they leave it at Scampton and a fugee shits on it or something when the joint becomes an asylum centre.
I’m sympathetic to the idea of privatisation brings in much needed private investment, an industry and consumer would be poorer without that private investment supporting state investment.
However it’s not simply a case of capitalism or socialism, privatised or nationalised, that type of thinking is for the brain dead. It’s more nuanced. The way the Tory party of yesteryear set all this up seems a bit “niche” in the greater world of capitalism, so yes, imo we should now be taking another look at things.
The FT editorials call this “well overdue a reset”. That sounds a tad dramatic, baby out with the bath water to me. But we are not the only capitalist country in the world searching for the right combination of fairly supplementing state finance with private investment.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
It's not too late to develop a deep and abiding love for the Mondays or the Stone Roses. I missed the summer of love too - I don't think it really made it to Fife - but my wife who is a lot cooler than me really turned me on to their music in the mid-90s. We went to see the Stone Roses play in Finsbury Park a few years ago - one of the best gigs I've ever been to, a sea of centrist dads (and mums) reliving their misspent youth.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
Summer of love was 1988, wasn't it? Stone Roses heyday, certainly was slightly later - Spike Island was 1990.
I was slightly too young for either. My main memory of summer 1988 was an advert for a laundry product ('do you remember the summer of 88, when everything looked so fresh and great? ... the best liquid, gets the whole wash right - and that's new - and about time too!' - some copywriter was on form for that one - bloody awful, obviously, but annoyingly catchy even 30 years later, which is surely the point - though I can't remember which brand it was.)
My memory of the Madchester era was how endemic casual violence was. I was a teenage boy: my music of choice at the time was heavy metal; you were far less likely to get into a fight at a metal gig than a Stone Roses or Happy Mondays gig.
Sadly, I came to the music only really in the early 90s, once the party had largely moved on. But Bez, SWR and Ian Brown, Reni and Mani still hold a place in my pantheon of musical heroes.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
I'm interpreting that as "no data" then
It’s simply not something on which data is published.
Have the official statistics for job vacancies instead, which showed a record high over Christmas.
So net migration of 700,000. That’s three Milton Keyneses.
How many housing units were completed last year?
Totally unsustainable. This will lead to a populist backlash eventually.
I assume the government chooses more immigration because it thinks it necessary. Noteworthy the big increase started after Brexit. Did Brexit make immigration more necessary?
I assume the government chooses more immigration because the political pain in restricting immigration is greater than the political pain in not restricting it. The trying-to-restrict-immigration-is-bad lobby seem rather more powerful than the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby.
I think this is right, but why has the balance changed from the second lobby to the first, which seems to be linked with Brexit? Is that because the economic damage of Brexit means the government feels compelled to use an immigration lever available to it? Or does the political failure of the Brexit project weaken the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby?
Add I don't expect this policy to change under Labour.
A really simple solution to immigration. Link number of people allowed to immigrate to number of new homes built in any given year. No new homes, no more immigrants.
Fwiw, I am not bothered by 1m new immigrants in the slightest if enough homes and infrastructure (schools, hospitals etc) can be built to support them.
Immigration should be directly linked to capacity of housing and other key services, and this should be a quota enshrined in law.
So your solution is to make the labour market as flexible and responsive as planning departments? I might see a flaw in this idea.
The opposite. If immigration of 1m-ish a year is imperative to the economy as people seem to think it is, the archaic and outdated 1947 planning laws would have to be abolished and replaced with something that would allow the rapid development of UK housing capacity and related infrastructure.
For many years though the same system was delivering around 300k houses per year. If you scrap the laws and replace them with new laws then ultimately the same problems just reappear; you have to decide where the housing is going to go, and people always have opinions about this that they are entitled to express in a democracy.
Also, why are 300k houses being consented and only half that number actually built?
The other issue is that there are areas of the UK with a massive surplus of housing - particularly the north, lots of areas where housing is very cheap. It isn't just a case of 'insufficient housing to accommodate migration'.
The problem is fundamentally about the absence of planning at a national level about how to accommodate growth, all it takes is for the government to decide they are going to do this, and it can happen through the existing laws.
Trying to scrap and rewrite the planning laws is just a distraction from more important issues and a waste of time. It is like redoing the plumbing when the problem is that there is no water supply at all.
Absolutely not true.
Number of housing units granted planning permission was about 150k for most of the 00s, and has gradually risen to circa 300k per year, with only 200k-ish a year actually being built - large developers land banking to artificially inflate prices is still a problem.
It suggests we need to build somewhere closer to 700k homes a year just to catch up on the UK's structural deficit, never mind immigration. To do that, we'd probably need to take the local element out of planning and replace it with a more permissive, centralised system. As has been pointed out downthread, you can have high immigration and you can reform planning laws, or you can have low immigration and stick with the planning laws as they are. You can't have both.
Most recent government report (March 2023) says 204k properties were built last year.
In short, we don't build nearly enough houses, no matter what people's local anecdata might suggest.
You are saying the problem is with the '1947 planning laws'. But the 1947 planning laws delivered over 400,000 house completions in 1968.
If you look the graph on the website I have linked to above, you can see the private housebuilding industry has delivered between 150,000 and 220,000 houses each year, going up and down with the economy. The difference is, before 1980, local authorities built a similar amount. After 1980, Council housebuilding was effectively stopped due to changes in government policy, initiated by the Conservatives. And then the overall number of houses being delivered fell sharply.
This indicates that the housing shortage is caused by the reliance on the private housebuilding industry to deliver new housing, and not much to do with the planning system. The solution to all of this is through building more Council housing.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Going for the easy likes? Tut!
Wage rises? Remind me what food inflation is currently running at?
UK: Food inflation 19%, wages up by 6% Germany: Food inflation 22%, wages up by 3%
Less bad is a kind of good.
An impressive industrial relations statistic from a Social Democrat led coalition government. Lib-Labs take note.
Unions colluding with employers to keep wages down, and thus keeping jobs from being offshored, is the German way in recent years I believe. Hard to know if in the long term it's good or bad.
So net migration of 700,000. That’s three Milton Keyneses.
How many housing units were completed last year?
Totally unsustainable. This will lead to a populist backlash eventually.
I assume the government chooses more immigration because it thinks it necessary. Noteworthy the big increase started after Brexit. Did Brexit make immigration more necessary?
I assume the government chooses more immigration because the political pain in restricting immigration is greater than the political pain in not restricting it. The trying-to-restrict-immigration-is-bad lobby seem rather more powerful than the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby.
I think this is right, but why has the balance changed from the second lobby to the first, which seems to be linked with Brexit? Is that because the economic damage of Brexit means the government feels compelled to use an immigration lever available to it? Or does the political failure of the Brexit project weaken the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby?
Add I don't expect this policy to change under Labour.
A really simple solution to immigration. Link number of people allowed to immigrate to number of new homes built in any given year. No new homes, no more immigrants.
Fwiw, I am not bothered by 1m new immigrants in the slightest if enough homes and infrastructure (schools, hospitals etc) can be built to support them.
Immigration should be directly linked to capacity of housing and other key services, and this should be a quota enshrined in law.
So your solution is to make the labour market as flexible and responsive as planning departments? I might see a flaw in this idea.
The opposite. If immigration of 1m-ish a year is imperative to the economy as people seem to think it is, the archaic and outdated 1947 planning laws would have to be abolished and replaced with something that would allow the rapid development of UK housing capacity and related infrastructure.
For many years though the same system was delivering around 300k houses per year. If you scrap the laws and replace them with new laws then ultimately the same problems just reappear; you have to decide where the housing is going to go, and people always have opinions about this that they are entitled to express in a democracy.
Also, why are 300k houses being consented and only half that number actually built?
The other issue is that there are areas of the UK with a massive surplus of housing - particularly the north, lots of areas where housing is very cheap. It isn't just a case of 'insufficient housing to accommodate migration'.
The problem is fundamentally about the absence of planning at a national level about how to accommodate growth, all it takes is for the government to decide they are going to do this, and it can happen through the existing laws.
Trying to scrap and rewrite the planning laws is just a distraction from more important issues and a waste of time. It is like redoing the plumbing when the problem is that there is no water supply at all.
Absolutely not true.
Number of housing units granted planning permission was about 150k for most of the 00s, and has gradually risen to circa 300k per year, with only 200k-ish a year actually being built - large developers land banking to artificially inflate prices is still a problem.
It suggests we need to build somewhere closer to 700k homes a year just to catch up on the UK's structural deficit, never mind immigration. To do that, we'd probably need to take the local element out of planning and replace it with a more permissive, centralised system. As has been pointed out downthread, you can have high immigration and you can reform planning laws, or you can have low immigration and stick with the planning laws as they are. You can't have both.
Most recent government report (March 2023) says 204k properties were built last year.
In short, we don't build nearly enough houses, no matter what people's local anecdata might suggest.
You are saying the problem is with the '1947 planning laws'. But the 1947 planning laws delivered over 400,000 house completions in 1968.
If you look the graph on the website I have linked to above, you can see the private housebuilding industry has delivered between 150,000 and 220,000 houses each year, going up and down with the economy. The difference is, before 1980, local authorities built a similar amount. After 1980, Council housebuilding was effectively stopped due to changes in government policy, initiated by the Conservatives. And then the overall number of houses being delivered fell sharply.
This indicates that the housing shortage is caused by the reliance on the private housebuilding industry to deliver new housing, and not much to do with the planning system. The solution to all of this is through building more Council housing.
I'd also like to entertain the role of the public sector as private developer in order to create the neighbourhoods it wishes to see (and also, I would hope, to do a bit to drive down prices).
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
Summer of love was 1988, wasn't it? Stone Roses heyday, certainly was slightly later - Spike Island was 1990.
I was slightly too young for either. My main memory of summer 1988 was an advert for a laundry product ('do you remember the summer of 88, when everything looked so fresh and great? ... the best liquid, gets the whole wash right - and that's new - and about time too!' - some copywriter was on form for that one - bloody awful, obviously, but annoyingly catchy even 30 years later, which is surely the point - though I can't remember which brand it was.)
My memory of the Madchester era was how endemic casual violence was. I was a teenage boy: my music of choice at the time was heavy metal; you were far less likely to get into a fight at a metal gig than a Stone Roses or Happy Mondays gig.
Sadly, I came to the music only really in the early 90s, once the party had largely moved on. But Bez, SWR and Ian Brown, Reni and Mani still hold a place in my pantheon of musical heroes.
Came across this the other day - BBC documentary about the Hacienda nightclub, talking in depth about the Manchester music scene at the time.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Going for the easy likes? Tut!
Wage rises? Remind me what food inflation is currently running at?
UK: Food inflation 19%, wages up by 6% Germany: Food inflation 22%, wages up by 3%
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Isn’t Kemi on the case , the alleged saviour of the Tory party !
Yes, but can she hold a jewelled sword while dressed like a character from Star Trek? We are informed that that is the key thing to look for in a leader.
I thought the gold wheat motif on blue showed support for Ukraine tbh.
So net migration of 700,000. That’s three Milton Keyneses.
How many housing units were completed last year?
Totally unsustainable. This will lead to a populist backlash eventually.
I assume the government chooses more immigration because it thinks it necessary. Noteworthy the big increase started after Brexit. Did Brexit make immigration more necessary?
I assume the government chooses more immigration because the political pain in restricting immigration is greater than the political pain in not restricting it. The trying-to-restrict-immigration-is-bad lobby seem rather more powerful than the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby.
I think this is right, but why has the balance changed from the second lobby to the first, which seems to be linked with Brexit? Is that because the economic damage of Brexit means the government feels compelled to use an immigration lever available to it? Or does the political failure of the Brexit project weaken the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby?
Add I don't expect this policy to change under Labour.
A really simple solution to immigration. Link number of people allowed to immigrate to number of new homes built in any given year. No new homes, no more immigrants.
Fwiw, I am not bothered by 1m new immigrants in the slightest if enough homes and infrastructure (schools, hospitals etc) can be built to support them.
Immigration should be directly linked to capacity of housing and other key services, and this should be a quota enshrined in law.
So your solution is to make the labour market as flexible and responsive as planning departments? I might see a flaw in this idea.
The opposite. If immigration of 1m-ish a year is imperative to the economy as people seem to think it is, the archaic and outdated 1947 planning laws would have to be abolished and replaced with something that would allow the rapid development of UK housing capacity and related infrastructure.
For many years though the same system was delivering around 300k houses per year. If you scrap the laws and replace them with new laws then ultimately the same problems just reappear; you have to decide where the housing is going to go, and people always have opinions about this that they are entitled to express in a democracy.
Also, why are 300k houses being consented and only half that number actually built?
The other issue is that there are areas of the UK with a massive surplus of housing - particularly the north, lots of areas where housing is very cheap. It isn't just a case of 'insufficient housing to accommodate migration'.
The problem is fundamentally about the absence of planning at a national level about how to accommodate growth, all it takes is for the government to decide they are going to do this, and it can happen through the existing laws.
Trying to scrap and rewrite the planning laws is just a distraction from more important issues and a waste of time. It is like redoing the plumbing when the problem is that there is no water supply at all.
Absolutely not true.
Number of housing units granted planning permission was about 150k for most of the 00s, and has gradually risen to circa 300k per year, with only 200k-ish a year actually being built - large developers land banking to artificially inflate prices is still a problem.
It suggests we need to build somewhere closer to 700k homes a year just to catch up on the UK's structural deficit, never mind immigration. To do that, we'd probably need to take the local element out of planning and replace it with a more permissive, centralised system. As has been pointed out downthread, you can have high immigration and you can reform planning laws, or you can have low immigration and stick with the planning laws as they are. You can't have both.
Most recent government report (March 2023) says 204k properties were built last year.
In short, we don't build nearly enough houses, no matter what people's local anecdata might suggest.
You are saying the problem is with the '1947 planning laws'. But the 1947 planning laws delivered over 400,000 house completions in 1968.
If you look the graph on the website I have linked to above, you can see the private housebuilding industry has delivered between 150,000 and 220,000 houses each year, going up and down with the economy. The difference is, before 1980, local authorities built a similar amount. After 1980, Council housebuilding was effectively stopped due to changes in government policy, initiated by the Conservatives. And then the overall number of houses being delivered fell sharply.
This indicates that the housing shortage is caused by the reliance on the private housebuilding industry to deliver new housing, and not much to do with the planning system. The solution to all of this is through building more Council housing.
How much will a council have to pay to employ the builders?
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
I'm interpreting that as "no data" then
It’s simply not something on which data is published.
Have the official statistics for job vacancies instead, which showed a record high over Christmas.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Isn’t Kemi on the case , the alleged saviour of the Tory party !
Yes, but can she hold a jewelled sword while dressed like a character from Star Trek? We are informed that that is the key thing to look for in a leader.
I thought the gold wheat motif on blue showed support for Ukraine tbh.
I think she looks like a fight attendant with Kazakhstan Airlines. I have never flown with Kazakhstan Airlines but I imagine the cabin crew with a uniform somewhat like that.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
I'm interpreting that as "no data" then
It’s simply not something on which data is published.
Have the official statistics for job vacancies instead, which showed a record high over Christmas.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
And after you disentangle that from sharp increases in legal minimum wage and changing working preferences after the pandemic the link between Brexit and wages is pretty inconclusive. If it were making as big a difference as claimed then the Bregret numbers would be lower than they are imo.
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
I'm interpreting that as "no data" then
It’s simply not something on which data is published.
Have the official statistics for job vacancies instead, which showed a record high over Christmas.
That's presumably quite a lot of work not getting done.
And yet employers appear to have reached the limits of how much they are willing/able to increase pay.
We've gone from "wages went up for low-pay sectors post Brexit and pre covid" to "there were a lot of vacancies 5 months ago".
There's no data here, just wishful thinking (or lies)
Nope. I said that wages have gone up for low-skilled *people*, many of whom have found better jobs.
The sectors where there’s a million vacancies, are those where employers are still wedded to the idea that the minimum wage is the maximum wage. Funnily enough, many of the same industries who fired zero-hours staff, rather than furlough them during the pandemic.
Perhaps there needs to be a push for a hospitality workers’ Union? Labour Party?
So net migration of 700,000. That’s three Milton Keyneses.
How many housing units were completed last year?
Totally unsustainable. This will lead to a populist backlash eventually.
I assume the government chooses more immigration because it thinks it necessary. Noteworthy the big increase started after Brexit. Did Brexit make immigration more necessary?
I assume the government chooses more immigration because the political pain in restricting immigration is greater than the political pain in not restricting it. The trying-to-restrict-immigration-is-bad lobby seem rather more powerful than the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby.
I think this is right, but why has the balance changed from the second lobby to the first, which seems to be linked with Brexit? Is that because the economic damage of Brexit means the government feels compelled to use an immigration lever available to it? Or does the political failure of the Brexit project weaken the allowing-immigration-is-bad lobby?
Add I don't expect this policy to change under Labour.
A really simple solution to immigration. Link number of people allowed to immigrate to number of new homes built in any given year. No new homes, no more immigrants.
Fwiw, I am not bothered by 1m new immigrants in the slightest if enough homes and infrastructure (schools, hospitals etc) can be built to support them.
Immigration should be directly linked to capacity of housing and other key services, and this should be a quota enshrined in law.
So your solution is to make the labour market as flexible and responsive as planning departments? I might see a flaw in this idea.
The opposite. If immigration of 1m-ish a year is imperative to the economy as people seem to think it is, the archaic and outdated 1947 planning laws would have to be abolished and replaced with something that would allow the rapid development of UK housing capacity and related infrastructure.
For many years though the same system was delivering around 300k houses per year. If you scrap the laws and replace them with new laws then ultimately the same problems just reappear; you have to decide where the housing is going to go, and people always have opinions about this that they are entitled to express in a democracy.
Also, why are 300k houses being consented and only half that number actually built?
The other issue is that there are areas of the UK with a massive surplus of housing - particularly the north, lots of areas where housing is very cheap. It isn't just a case of 'insufficient housing to accommodate migration'.
The problem is fundamentally about the absence of planning at a national level about how to accommodate growth, all it takes is for the government to decide they are going to do this, and it can happen through the existing laws.
Trying to scrap and rewrite the planning laws is just a distraction from more important issues and a waste of time. It is like redoing the plumbing when the problem is that there is no water supply at all.
Absolutely not true.
Number of housing units granted planning permission was about 150k for most of the 00s, and has gradually risen to circa 300k per year, with only 200k-ish a year actually being built - large developers land banking to artificially inflate prices is still a problem.
It suggests we need to build somewhere closer to 700k homes a year just to catch up on the UK's structural deficit, never mind immigration. To do that, we'd probably need to take the local element out of planning and replace it with a more permissive, centralised system. As has been pointed out downthread, you can have high immigration and you can reform planning laws, or you can have low immigration and stick with the planning laws as they are. You can't have both.
Most recent government report (March 2023) says 204k properties were built last year.
In short, we don't build nearly enough houses, no matter what people's local anecdata might suggest.
You are saying the problem is with the '1947 planning laws'. But the 1947 planning laws delivered over 400,000 house completions in 1968.
If you look the graph on the website I have linked to above, you can see the private housebuilding industry has delivered between 150,000 and 220,000 houses each year, going up and down with the economy. The difference is, before 1980, local authorities built a similar amount. After 1980, Council housebuilding was effectively stopped due to changes in government policy, initiated by the Conservatives. And then the overall number of houses being delivered fell sharply.
This indicates that the housing shortage is caused by the reliance on the private housebuilding industry to deliver new housing, and not much to do with the planning system. The solution to all of this is through building more Council housing.
How much will a council have to pay to employ the builders?
Probably much the same.
But think of it like the difference between Private Rail Companies (which are generally pretty poor) and Private Concessions under government control (the TfL model for things like Overground, which seems to work pretty well).
If private companies are given clear direction ("run this train service to this specification", or "build a community with this mix of housing and these facilities at this rate") they can get on with optimising the efficiency of doing that. It seems to be part of the secret sauce that makes new settlements like Poundbury work.
If the only direction is to maximise shareholder value, the temptation to find shortcuts that increase profit but miss the point of the thing being provided is too great.
I stand by my statement. That's the Second Summer of Love, as it says. There's only one Summer of Love - 1967. Although I was only 10, I was a precocious young lad and had a great time.
That's a highly competitive field, but a leading contender would be the remark by Leon that enabled him to wrestle the position of PB anti-tipster from Roger's grasp.
It was something to do with Truss having the potential to surprise on the upside, if I recall correctly.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
I’m happy to accept this. It’s still anecdotal, but at least it comes from a place of experience.
The broader claim, though, that Brexit has delivered a sustainable rise in wages for the lower skilled, is basically copium for the berks that voted to Leave.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
I've put my lads wages up from ~£11/h to ~£18/h since this time in 2021. I can't be alone in this...
I stand by my statement. That's the Second Summer of Love, as it says. There's only one Summer of Love - 1967. Although I was only 10, I was a precocious young lad and had a great time.
I was 10 in 1988. Wished I was eight years older for ages, my cousin was 18 at the time and had great fun!
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Isn’t Kemi on the case , the alleged saviour of the Tory party !
Yes, but can she hold a jewelled sword while dressed like a character from Star Trek? We are informed that that is the key thing to look for in a leader.
I thought the gold wheat motif on blue showed support for Ukraine tbh.
I think she looks like a fight attendant with Kazakhstan Airlines. I have never flown with Kazakhstan Airlines but I imagine the cabin crew with a uniform somewhat like that.
Which is absolutely fine since it reminds me of Kathleen Turner as China Blue in Crimes of Passion. One of my favourite movie scenes.
That's a highly competitive field, but a leading contender would be the remark by Leon that enabled him to wrestle the position of PB anti-tipster from Roger's grasp.
It was something to do with Truss having the potential to surprise on the upside, if I recall correctly.
The one about a hitherto sceptical Britain falling boundlessly in love with Liz Truss after a journalist fainted in front of her at a Tory leadership debate was a goodie.
That's a highly competitive field, but a leading contender would be the remark by Leon that enabled him to wrestle the position of PB anti-tipster from Roger's grasp.
It was something to do with Truss having the potential to surprise on the upside, if I recall correctly.
I mean Sean's Truss comment was ridiculous but at the end of the day that was only about the Tories and this country where as the run on Northern Rock was one of the early signs that the entire global financial system was 12 months from crashing!
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
Hang on, I thought you were working to automate the front-to-back trade flows at a bank?
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Nigel Farage is not on the TV all the time
He's still the conscience of the nation.
Nicotine stained finger still on the aged faltering valetudinarian pulse of the nation.
That dam busters dog story feels like it could become ground zero for the British culture war, it's not surprising that Farage is all over it like a nasty rash. I feel certain it is going to provide the most exquisite entertainment.
It's not like the MoD are going to chuck N*****'s skeleton into the sea at Skeggy. They are moving it to Marham to be with the Hole in the Wall Gang which makes a sort of sense. The gammons are going be more livid if they leave it at Scampton and a fugee shits on it or something when the joint becomes an asylum centre.
After I deciphered your code, I laughed a lot!
Dura Ace needs to type up that auto biography - before he loses all his fingers in the garage workshop.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
It's not too late to develop a deep and abiding love for the Mondays or the Stone Roses. I missed the summer of love too - I don't think it really made it to Fife - but my wife who is a lot cooler than me really turned me on to their music in the mid-90s. We went to see the Stone Roses play in Finsbury Park a few years ago - one of the best gigs I've ever been to, a sea of centrist dads (and mums) reliving their misspent youth.
Try The House of Love. They were the best band of that era. Their problem, though, was that they came from London rather than Manchester.
"The UK government has said it will investigate after the Post Office admitted it had wrongly paid thousands of pounds of bonuses to top executives simply for cooperating with an inquiry into a long-running miscarriage of justice.
The Post Office chief executive, Nick Read, agreed last week to return an undisclosed portion of the £455,000 bonus reported by the state-owned company in its annual report in March.
Kevin Hollinrake, a minister at the Department for Business and Trade, on Wednesday told parliament he had commissioned the government investigation into how the bonuses were awarded, as furious MPs said the Post Office had “added insult to injury” with the latest twist in the scandal.
“The situation is extremely concerning and deeply regrettable, and the Post Office is right to apologise,” Hollinrake said in response to an urgent question."
I would just ask. Can anyone name a tangible Brexit benefit as of right now for anyone under the age of 45? Thanks.
Increased wages for lower skilled workers. Granted the benefit of that has now been eroded by inflation. But inflation has happened everywhere.
Harder to say what the benefit has been for the graduate class, not least because far fewer restrictions were placed on the arrival of the knowledge class.
All quite difficult to say for sure because we will never have a counterfactual, and so much has happened in the last seven years that it is hard to unpick the impacts of one thing from another.
Have the wages for lower skilled workers notably increased? The fact that we now have record levels of immigration - the government must want them here for some purpose - kind of suggests not.
Well they did, very quickly after Brexit. But then, covid/Ukraine-triggered inflation, and everyone got poorer. I think you over-credit the government with planning immigration in response to demand or otherwise. My take is that government is incapable of restricting immigration in a way which it is willing to take the political hit for doing so. It is just reacting (or not) to events. Ukrainians and HK Chinese are special cases, of course.
Would still like to know about this. I've only ever heard anecdotes and never seen any data for this "post Brexit wage rise".
Sandpit must surely have the data as he posts with absolute conviction about it once a week.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence. The key thing is to look at pay rises for people, which have far outstripped pay rises for jobs. People who were working in cafes before the pandemic, are now working as delivery drivers.
I'm interpreting that as "no data" then
It’s simply not something on which data is published.
Have the official statistics for job vacancies instead, which showed a record high over Christmas.
That's presumably quite a lot of work not getting done.
And yet employers appear to have reached the limits of how much they are willing/able to increase pay.
We've gone from "wages went up for low-pay sectors post Brexit and pre covid" to "there were a lot of vacancies 5 months ago".
There's no data here, just wishful thinking (or lies)
Did you miss the bit on supply and demand in economics 101? If demand for workers is presently outstripping supply, what does that probably say about the direction of travel of the price?
That's a highly competitive field, but a leading contender would be the remark by Leon that enabled him to wrestle the position of PB anti-tipster from Roger's grasp.
It was something to do with Truss having the potential to surprise on the upside, if I recall correctly.
The one about a hitherto sceptical Britain falling boundlessly in love with Liz Truss after a journalist fainted in front of her at a Tory leadership debate was a goodie.
I argued a few times that Boris Johnson would increase his majority at a general election in 2024.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
A lot of people say Australia in the 80s and 90s was a fantastic place to be, (more so than now). Was that true?
I should be quite grateful for my £90 course offer for 75 in a 60 then, at the archbishop's rate it would have been over £1500.
If it were up to me, you'd be banned for 75 in a 60.
It was on the M25 in a variable speed limit. I must have missed the sign (fair enough) but so did everyone else.
Personally I think 75mph is perfectly safe on some sections of single carriageway but I accept there are plenty where it's dangerous... then again there are plenty of national speed limit roads where 60 is suicidal.
There are definitely sections where single carriageway speeding is relatively safe, but I'd still throw the book at anyone who does it. Those 60 roads have all sorts of things going on that motorways try to engineer out: blind summits, fallen branches, adverse cambers, no central reservation protection, cyclists, walkers, tractors, potholes, oncoming overtakers and much more. People get complacent on A-roads, especially ones they know, and suddenly one day conditions are different and wham you're in a pickle. I've got a lot more sympathy with people going too fast on a motorway: they are spaces designed for speed, and the risks are lower. 85 on a motorway is silly. 75 on a single carriageway is stupid.
The 70 mph speed limit was brought in when people were driving Ford Anglias and Cortinas. Modern cars stop in half the distance. 70mph is absurdly slow which is why virtually no-one adheres to it and why most other European countries have the equivalent of 80
Depends where in the country you are and I think many forget the typical speedometer showing 75mph is far far more likely to be doing 70mph or less than near 75mph. On the M25 in medium traffic, good conditions I'd guess the proportion of traffic actually speeding is less than 10% of vehicles, maybe 20-25% of cars. Very few doing actual 80mph+ rather than 80mph+ on speedo.
I hadn't really clocked till recently (probably cos I only drive shortish distances with a car full of kids or shopping) but the speedo on our mighty lemon yellow Kia defo understates vs them digital signs that tell you what your speed is.
Google maps tends to report my speed at about 5% over what my speedo says. I tend to trust the app, but I'm not clear in my head why I do.
I should be quite grateful for my £90 course offer for 75 in a 60 then, at the archbishop's rate it would have been over £1500.
If it were up to me, you'd be banned for 75 in a 60.
It was on the M25 in a variable speed limit. I must have missed the sign (fair enough) but so did everyone else.
Personally I think 75mph is perfectly safe on some sections of single carriageway but I accept there are plenty where it's dangerous... then again there are plenty of national speed limit roads where 60 is suicidal.
There are definitely sections where single carriageway speeding is relatively safe, but I'd still throw the book at anyone who does it. Those 60 roads have all sorts of things going on that motorways try to engineer out: blind summits, fallen branches, adverse cambers, no central reservation protection, cyclists, walkers, tractors, potholes, oncoming overtakers and much more. People get complacent on A-roads, especially ones they know, and suddenly one day conditions are different and wham you're in a pickle. I've got a lot more sympathy with people going too fast on a motorway: they are spaces designed for speed, and the risks are lower. 85 on a motorway is silly. 75 on a single carriageway is stupid.
The 70 mph speed limit was brought in when people were driving Ford Anglias and Cortinas. Modern cars stop in half the distance. 70mph is absurdly slow which is why virtually no-one adheres to it and why most other European countries have the equivalent of 80
Depends where in the country you are and I think many forget the typical speedometer showing 75mph is far far more likely to be doing 70mph or less than near 75mph. On the M25 in medium traffic, good conditions I'd guess the proportion of traffic actually speeding is less than 10% of vehicles, maybe 20-25% of cars. Very few doing actual 80mph+ rather than 80mph+ on speedo.
I hadn't really clocked till recently (probably cos I only drive shortish distances with a car full of kids or shopping) but the speedo on our mighty lemon yellow Kia defo understates vs them digital signs that tell you what your speed is.
Google maps tends to report my speed at about 5% over what my speedo says. I tend to trust the app, but I'm not clear in my head why I do.
Google maps also tends to understate how long it will take to drive anywhere - though maybe that's just me!
That's funny. I find Google maps usually spot on in terms of time, but under-reads the speedo by 5% or more. I had assumed the GPS was more accurate than the speedo (since by law these can't under-read but can over-read), but I'm not convinced that the GPS recorded speed is completely accurate?
Google Maps on your phone is going to be damn close, if you’re doing a steady speed on a straight road. Much more so than a mechanical spedo.
There are dedicated in-car race GPS boxes, from companies like Racelogic and Dragy, that have a high resolution and will be more accurate still.
That’s reassuring, except that I was done on an average speed camera on the M20 for driving above 40mph, when the car showed me at 45mlh and the GPS at pretty close to 40mph. It wasn’t worth arguing about - I simply did an online speed awareness course - but it did suggest to me either that the margin of error on average speed traps has been almost eliminated or that my Google Maps GPS speed was under-estimated.
Deffo @Roger from September 2007 telling us all that the run on Northern Rock would be all forgotten about by the end of the week...
Mystic Rose posted quite energetically about the coming Trump landslide in 2020.
Compouter's posts about Ed Miliband's triumphant 2015 General Election.
Don’t remember Compouter. But BJO energetically and repeatedly claimed that Ed would be PM in 2015. What’s he predicting these days?
BJO has a terrible prediction record, it is kind of astonishing actually. He deserves a lot of credit for coming back and carrying on in good grace, nice chap.
Why do the Tories let Helen Whately out? She is worth votes to Labour every time she opens her mouth.
So what's your estimate of how long it will take?
If Keir Starmer was saying 25 years you'd be saying how ludicrous that is. And rightfully so.
(Snip)
I've recently mentioned the complexities of sorting this issue out; and it is massively complex and expensive. It's also an area (civ eng / groundworks) I have a little knowledge and a lot of passion for.
So no, I wouldn't claim how ludicrous it is. And from your response, I guess you've got no idea yourself.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
I’m happy to accept this. It’s still anecdotal, but at least it comes from a place of experience.
The broader claim, though, that Brexit has delivered a sustainable rise in wages for the lower skilled, is basically copium for the berks that voted to Leave.
It is also true that for a broad range of low end jobs, wages have shifted from minimum wage.
All the supermarkets are advertising higher wages. Lorry drivers. Pub staff…
I voted remain - but denying what I have to actually sign of (wage increases) strikes me as complete Donald Fucking Trump level shit.
I should be quite grateful for my £90 course offer for 75 in a 60 then, at the archbishop's rate it would have been over £1500.
If it were up to me, you'd be banned for 75 in a 60.
It was on the M25 in a variable speed limit. I must have missed the sign (fair enough) but so did everyone else.
Personally I think 75mph is perfectly safe on some sections of single carriageway but I accept there are plenty where it's dangerous... then again there are plenty of national speed limit roads where 60 is suicidal.
There are definitely sections where single carriageway speeding is relatively safe, but I'd still throw the book at anyone who does it. Those 60 roads have all sorts of things going on that motorways try to engineer out: blind summits, fallen branches, adverse cambers, no central reservation protection, cyclists, walkers, tractors, potholes, oncoming overtakers and much more. People get complacent on A-roads, especially ones they know, and suddenly one day conditions are different and wham you're in a pickle. I've got a lot more sympathy with people going too fast on a motorway: they are spaces designed for speed, and the risks are lower. 85 on a motorway is silly. 75 on a single carriageway is stupid.
The 70 mph speed limit was brought in when people were driving Ford Anglias and Cortinas. Modern cars stop in half the distance. 70mph is absurdly slow which is why virtually no-one adheres to it and why most other European countries have the equivalent of 80
Depends where in the country you are and I think many forget the typical speedometer showing 75mph is far far more likely to be doing 70mph or less than near 75mph. On the M25 in medium traffic, good conditions I'd guess the proportion of traffic actually speeding is less than 10% of vehicles, maybe 20-25% of cars. Very few doing actual 80mph+ rather than 80mph+ on speedo.
I hadn't really clocked till recently (probably cos I only drive shortish distances with a car full of kids or shopping) but the speedo on our mighty lemon yellow Kia defo understates vs them digital signs that tell you what your speed is.
Google maps tends to report my speed at about 5% over what my speedo says. I tend to trust the app, but I'm not clear in my head why I do.
I should be quite grateful for my £90 course offer for 75 in a 60 then, at the archbishop's rate it would have been over £1500.
If it were up to me, you'd be banned for 75 in a 60.
It was on the M25 in a variable speed limit. I must have missed the sign (fair enough) but so did everyone else.
Personally I think 75mph is perfectly safe on some sections of single carriageway but I accept there are plenty where it's dangerous... then again there are plenty of national speed limit roads where 60 is suicidal.
There are definitely sections where single carriageway speeding is relatively safe, but I'd still throw the book at anyone who does it. Those 60 roads have all sorts of things going on that motorways try to engineer out: blind summits, fallen branches, adverse cambers, no central reservation protection, cyclists, walkers, tractors, potholes, oncoming overtakers and much more. People get complacent on A-roads, especially ones they know, and suddenly one day conditions are different and wham you're in a pickle. I've got a lot more sympathy with people going too fast on a motorway: they are spaces designed for speed, and the risks are lower. 85 on a motorway is silly. 75 on a single carriageway is stupid.
The 70 mph speed limit was brought in when people were driving Ford Anglias and Cortinas. Modern cars stop in half the distance. 70mph is absurdly slow which is why virtually no-one adheres to it and why most other European countries have the equivalent of 80
Depends where in the country you are and I think many forget the typical speedometer showing 75mph is far far more likely to be doing 70mph or less than near 75mph. On the M25 in medium traffic, good conditions I'd guess the proportion of traffic actually speeding is less than 10% of vehicles, maybe 20-25% of cars. Very few doing actual 80mph+ rather than 80mph+ on speedo.
I hadn't really clocked till recently (probably cos I only drive shortish distances with a car full of kids or shopping) but the speedo on our mighty lemon yellow Kia defo understates vs them digital signs that tell you what your speed is.
Google maps tends to report my speed at about 5% over what my speedo says. I tend to trust the app, but I'm not clear in my head why I do.
Google maps also tends to understate how long it will take to drive anywhere - though maybe that's just me!
That's funny. I find Google maps usually spot on in terms of time, but under-reads the speedo by 5% or more. I had assumed the GPS was more accurate than the speedo (since by law these can't under-read but can over-read), but I'm not convinced that the GPS recorded speed is completely accurate?
Google Maps on your phone is going to be damn close, if you’re doing a steady speed on a straight road. Much more so than a mechanical spedo.
There are dedicated in-car race GPS boxes, from companies like Racelogic and Dragy, that have a high resolution and will be more accurate still.
That’s reassuring, except that I was done on an average speed camera on the M20 for driving above 40mph, when the car showed me at 45mlh and the GPS at pretty close to 40mph. It wasn’t worth arguing about - I simply did an online speed awareness course - but it did suggest to me either that the margin of error on average speed traps has been almost eliminated or that my Google Maps GPS speed was under-estimated.
If I was done by an average speed camera, I’d always go to court. Ask them for the distance between the cameras, the calibration certificates for every piece of equipment involved, including that which measured the distance, the distance between the car and the camera when it was photographed. The training record of the officer who wrote the ticket, who you expect to appear in court. There’s so much they can get wrong with that setup.
Why do the Tories let Helen Whately out? She is worth votes to Labour every time she opens her mouth.
So what's your estimate of how long it will take?
If Keir Starmer was saying 25 years you'd be saying how ludicrous that is. And rightfully so.
(Snip)
I've recently mentioned the complexities of sorting this issue out; and it is massively complex and expensive. It's also an area (civ eng / groundworks) I have a little knowledge and a lot of passion for.
So no, I wouldn't claim how ludicrous it is. And from your response, I guess you've got no idea yourself.
Surely the main problem is emergency, storm release procedures are now being operated all year around and with no sanction. It's far cheaper to pump **** into surface waters than it is to process ****. It's a scandal, allowed with tacit agreement from your government.
When will net migration be in the tens of thousands ?
Never. The UK will likely always remain a desirable place for immigrants to move to.
We had net emigration in the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher.
Indeed, it included me, as I was away 18 months in Australasia.
Exactly ditto! I lived for 18 months in Sydney in the 80s. I missed the Summer Of Love. Who knows the long term ramifications of this. Eg there's a hole in my centre where the Summer Of Love would have been. I have no emotional relationship whatsoever with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, "Bez", etc.
A lot of people say Australia in the 80s and 90s was a fantastic place to be, (more so than now). Was that true?
I had a great time but 18 months was about right. My son was born there actually.
Deffo @Roger from September 2007 telling us all that the run on Northern Rock would be all forgotten about by the end of the week...
Mystic Rose posted quite energetically about the coming Trump landslide in 2020.
Compouter's posts about Ed Miliband's triumphant 2015 General Election.
Don’t remember Compouter. But BJO energetically and repeatedly claimed that Ed would be PM in 2015. What’s he predicting these days?
BJO has a terrible prediction record, it is kind of astonishing actually. He deserves a lot of credit for coming back and carrying on in good grace, nice chap.
Even with the benefit of hindsight his rear view mirror predictions aren't too hot. "Jeremy Corbyn won GE2017" is a regular favourite.
Why do the Tories let Helen Whately out? She is worth votes to Labour every time she opens her mouth.
So what's your estimate of how long it will take?
If Keir Starmer was saying 25 years you'd be saying how ludicrous that is. And rightfully so.
(Snip)
I've recently mentioned the complexities of sorting this issue out; and it is massively complex and expensive. It's also an area (civ eng / groundworks) I have a little knowledge and a lot of passion for.
So no, I wouldn't claim how ludicrous it is. And from your response, I guess you've got no idea yourself.
To intercept and treat the outflows in question, will require major works in most cases.
The Thames Super Sewer project was kicked off (as an analysis/consultation) in 2001 and is due to be finally completed in 2025.
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
I’m happy to accept this. It’s still anecdotal, but at least it comes from a place of experience.
The broader claim, though, that Brexit has delivered a sustainable rise in wages for the lower skilled, is basically copium for the berks that voted to Leave.
It is also true that for a broad range of low end jobs, wages have shifted from minimum wage.
All the supermarkets are advertising higher wages. Lorry drivers. Pub staff…
I voted remain - but denying what I have to actually sign of (wage increases) strikes me as complete Donald Fucking Trump level shit.
The minimum wage hasn’t risen to the same extent as inflation so it’s not a great metric.
"Vote Labour to get immigration under control." The Tories are finished if voters start to believe that statement.
Well their current policy framework says no return to free movement + points-based immigration system.
So the Tories have been particularly dumb by saying they'll stop the boats. They have clearly lost all political ability after being in Government too long.
I should be quite grateful for my £90 course offer for 75 in a 60 then, at the archbishop's rate it would have been over £1500.
If it were up to me, you'd be banned for 75 in a 60.
It was on the M25 in a variable speed limit. I must have missed the sign (fair enough) but so did everyone else.
Personally I think 75mph is perfectly safe on some sections of single carriageway but I accept there are plenty where it's dangerous... then again there are plenty of national speed limit roads where 60 is suicidal.
There are definitely sections where single carriageway speeding is relatively safe, but I'd still throw the book at anyone who does it. Those 60 roads have all sorts of things going on that motorways try to engineer out: blind summits, fallen branches, adverse cambers, no central reservation protection, cyclists, walkers, tractors, potholes, oncoming overtakers and much more. People get complacent on A-roads, especially ones they know, and suddenly one day conditions are different and wham you're in a pickle. I've got a lot more sympathy with people going too fast on a motorway: they are spaces designed for speed, and the risks are lower. 85 on a motorway is silly. 75 on a single carriageway is stupid.
The 70 mph speed limit was brought in when people were driving Ford Anglias and Cortinas. Modern cars stop in half the distance. 70mph is absurdly slow which is why virtually no-one adheres to it and why most other European countries have the equivalent of 80
Depends where in the country you are and I think many forget the typical speedometer showing 75mph is far far more likely to be doing 70mph or less than near 75mph. On the M25 in medium traffic, good conditions I'd guess the proportion of traffic actually speeding is less than 10% of vehicles, maybe 20-25% of cars. Very few doing actual 80mph+ rather than 80mph+ on speedo.
I hadn't really clocked till recently (probably cos I only drive shortish distances with a car full of kids or shopping) but the speedo on our mighty lemon yellow Kia defo understates vs them digital signs that tell you what your speed is.
Google maps tends to report my speed at about 5% over what my speedo says. I tend to trust the app, but I'm not clear in my head why I do.
I should be quite grateful for my £90 course offer for 75 in a 60 then, at the archbishop's rate it would have been over £1500.
If it were up to me, you'd be banned for 75 in a 60.
It was on the M25 in a variable speed limit. I must have missed the sign (fair enough) but so did everyone else.
Personally I think 75mph is perfectly safe on some sections of single carriageway but I accept there are plenty where it's dangerous... then again there are plenty of national speed limit roads where 60 is suicidal.
There are definitely sections where single carriageway speeding is relatively safe, but I'd still throw the book at anyone who does it. Those 60 roads have all sorts of things going on that motorways try to engineer out: blind summits, fallen branches, adverse cambers, no central reservation protection, cyclists, walkers, tractors, potholes, oncoming overtakers and much more. People get complacent on A-roads, especially ones they know, and suddenly one day conditions are different and wham you're in a pickle. I've got a lot more sympathy with people going too fast on a motorway: they are spaces designed for speed, and the risks are lower. 85 on a motorway is silly. 75 on a single carriageway is stupid.
The 70 mph speed limit was brought in when people were driving Ford Anglias and Cortinas. Modern cars stop in half the distance. 70mph is absurdly slow which is why virtually no-one adheres to it and why most other European countries have the equivalent of 80
Depends where in the country you are and I think many forget the typical speedometer showing 75mph is far far more likely to be doing 70mph or less than near 75mph. On the M25 in medium traffic, good conditions I'd guess the proportion of traffic actually speeding is less than 10% of vehicles, maybe 20-25% of cars. Very few doing actual 80mph+ rather than 80mph+ on speedo.
I hadn't really clocked till recently (probably cos I only drive shortish distances with a car full of kids or shopping) but the speedo on our mighty lemon yellow Kia defo understates vs them digital signs that tell you what your speed is.
Google maps tends to report my speed at about 5% over what my speedo says. I tend to trust the app, but I'm not clear in my head why I do.
Google maps also tends to understate how long it will take to drive anywhere - though maybe that's just me!
That's funny. I find Google maps usually spot on in terms of time, but under-reads the speedo by 5% or more. I had assumed the GPS was more accurate than the speedo (since by law these can't under-read but can over-read), but I'm not convinced that the GPS recorded speed is completely accurate?
Google Maps on your phone is going to be damn close, if you’re doing a steady speed on a straight road. Much more so than a mechanical spedo.
There are dedicated in-car race GPS boxes, from companies like Racelogic and Dragy, that have a high resolution and will be more accurate still.
That’s reassuring, except that I was done on an average speed camera on the M20 for driving above 40mph, when the car showed me at 45mlh and the GPS at pretty close to 40mph. It wasn’t worth arguing about - I simply did an online speed awareness course - but it did suggest to me either that the margin of error on average speed traps has been almost eliminated or that my Google Maps GPS speed was under-estimated.
If I was done by an average speed camera, I’d always go to court. Ask them for the distance between the cameras, the calibration certificates for every piece of equipment involved, including that which measured the distance, the distance between the car and the camera when it was photographed. The training record of the officer who wrote the ticket, who you expect to appear in court. There’s so much they can get wrong with that setup.
That sounds like that guy who makes a living challenging speeding fines.
Whereas I had to sit with my iPad on zoom half listening to the speed awareness course whilst having PB up on my PC engaging in online chat with you lot. Which was definitely the path of least resistance.
My perception is that the margin of error with speed cameras is slowly being reduced. Thankfully Brexit (lol, as a committed remainer) is getting us off speed cameras in Europe - where the same thing is happening. The Swiss never gave much of a margin of error but I was told by my hotel owner last week that France is going the same way. Certainly, download Waze and France appears covered in police who have nothing better to do than sit at the side of the road trying to catch people who are speeding.
Deffo @Roger from September 2007 telling us all that the run on Northern Rock would be all forgotten about by the end of the week...
Mystic Rose posted quite energetically about the coming Trump landslide in 2020.
Compouter's posts about Ed Miliband's triumphant 2015 General Election.
Don’t remember Compouter. But BJO energetically and repeatedly claimed that Ed would be PM in 2015. What’s he predicting these days?
BJO has a terrible prediction record, it is kind of astonishing actually. He deserves a lot of credit for coming back and carrying on in good grace, nice chap.
Even with the benefit of hindsight his rear view mirror predictions aren't too hot. "Jeremy Corbyn won GE2017" is a regular favourite.
I particularly enjoy when he proclaims JC won in 2017 despite doing worse than Gordon Brown, who he says lost.
Why do the Tories let Helen Whately out? She is worth votes to Labour every time she opens her mouth.
So what's your estimate of how long it will take?
If Keir Starmer was saying 25 years you'd be saying how ludicrous that is. And rightfully so.
(Snip)
I've recently mentioned the complexities of sorting this issue out; and it is massively complex and expensive. It's also an area (civ eng / groundworks) I have a little knowledge and a lot of passion for.
So no, I wouldn't claim how ludicrous it is. And from your response, I guess you've got no idea yourself.
Surely the main problem is emergency, storm release procedures are now being operated all year around and with no sanction. It's far cheaper to pump **** into surface waters than it is to process ****. It's a scandal, allowed with tacit agreement from your government.
There are many problems. Non-separation of 'dirty' water with rainwater runoff is a massive one - many new developments (such as mine) separate the two. This, along with SuDS, means the amount of dirty water being released into watercourses is not just minimised, but stopped.
Then you have the new measuring standards, which are almost certainly inflating the figures a lot.
It's not that it's 'cheaper' to pump into surface waters; it's that it's all they can do. They have no choice (or I suppose they could allow the pipes to back up...). Fixing this is highly non-trivial; and one of the best ways is to try to separate rainwater run off from sewage. And it doesn't need a brain of Britain to see how difficult that is on existing developments...
Sandpit constantly claims that Brexit delivered a wage rise for the lower paid, and then cites Stuart Rose’s gaffe during the campaign as a killer quote.
He does this about once a week and usually gets a handful of “likes”.
There’s bugger all evidence of any wage rise, save for spikes in very specific jobs (truck drivers) where Brexit caused a sudden shock to labour supply.
Brexit related inflation (ie the knock on effect of increased distribution costs) pretty quickly dissipated any gains, and Brexit related productivity stagnation has permanently impaired everybody’s ability to command a higher wage.
And we’ve had even higher migration since, much of it quite low skilled.
Have you talked to anyone who employees people? Wage rises and difficulty in getting people are two major topics for all the people I know, who are employing people in the lower end of the job market.
Is this the old "PB anecdote vs data" phenomenon that people talk about?
I am involved with two companies that employ people in construction. Wages have gone up, probably a bit more than inflation, for the lowest paid. Everyone else in the industry says the same.
I’m happy to accept this. It’s still anecdotal, but at least it comes from a place of experience.
The broader claim, though, that Brexit has delivered a sustainable rise in wages for the lower skilled, is basically copium for the berks that voted to Leave.
It is also true that for a broad range of low end jobs, wages have shifted from minimum wage.
All the supermarkets are advertising higher wages. Lorry drivers. Pub staff…
I voted remain - but denying what I have to actually sign of (wage increases) strikes me as complete Donald Fucking Trump level shit.
The minimum wage hasn’t risen to the same extent as inflation so it’s not a great metric.
The Trump reference is a self own on your part.
I have to sign off on the wage increases. Am I supposed to deny they are happening?
Once again - wages at the bottom end have risen. Sometimes exceeding inflation. This is true from the evidence of my own business experience and working with suppliers.
This is required to get the workers.
That this is a driver for inflation in the U.K. is quite evident.
I get that people find it upsetting to talk about. But denying it is as stupid as the people who claim there is no housing shortage.
Comments
A big part of it is that those opposed to change have lots of time on their hands and their opinions then come to dominate local politics.
Also, given that developers have a bad reputation generally and often make a massive mess, people feel reluctant to support them.
https://twitter.com/MikeHolden42/status/1655672012587540509
Germany: Food inflation 22%, wages up by 3%
Less bad is a kind of good.
So many people have been forced to find new jobs and in many cases, better ones.
I’ve now found a nice little wine bar where I’m very much enjoying some oysters with a glass of Pouilly-Fumé
This is so much more like holiday than the walking!
Though personally I though Penny in her outfit looked more like a monarch than Chas in his.
Worth remembering that, even in the midst of a major banking crisis, the largest Tory lead over Labour before the 2010GE was 28%. And the nadir of Labour polling under Corbyn, polling so bad that it convinced Theresa May to call an early general election, even that was only 25% behind.
So political parties can be incredibly unpopular, but not be thirty points behind. Truss' tenure as PM really was so epically catastrophic that she took polling deficits to extreme scales.
For Sunak to plumb those depths over immigration he would have to fly to Calais in order to bring migrants back to Britain with him in his expensively chartered private jet. It's not going to happen.
I’m sympathetic to the idea of privatisation brings in much needed private investment, an industry and consumer would be poorer without that private investment supporting state investment.
However it’s not simply a case of capitalism or socialism, privatised or nationalised, that type of thinking is for the brain dead. It’s more nuanced. The way the Tory party of yesteryear set all this up seems a bit “niche” in the greater world of capitalism, so yes, imo we should now be taking another look at things.
The FT editorials call this “well overdue a reset”. That sounds a tad dramatic, baby out with the bath water to me. But we are not the only capitalist country in the world searching for the right combination of fairly supplementing state finance with private investment.
I was slightly too young for either. My main memory of summer 1988 was an advert for a laundry product ('do you remember the summer of 88, when everything looked so fresh and great? ... the best liquid, gets the whole wash right - and that's new - and about time too!' - some copywriter was on form for that one - bloody awful, obviously, but annoyingly catchy even 30 years later, which is surely the point - though I can't remember which brand it was.)
My memory of the Madchester era was how endemic casual violence was. I was a teenage boy: my music of choice at the time was heavy metal; you were far less likely to get into a fight at a metal gig than a Stone Roses or Happy Mondays gig.
Sadly, I came to the music only really in the early 90s, once the party had largely moved on.
But Bez, SWR and Ian Brown, Reni and Mani still hold a place in my pantheon of musical heroes.
Have the official statistics for job vacancies instead, which showed a record high over Christmas.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/latest
https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/
If you look the graph on the website I have linked to above, you can see the private housebuilding industry has delivered between 150,000 and 220,000 houses each year, going up and down with the economy. The difference is, before 1980, local authorities built a similar amount. After 1980, Council housebuilding was effectively stopped due to changes in government policy, initiated by the Conservatives. And then the overall number of houses being delivered fell sharply.
This indicates that the housing shortage is caused by the reliance on the private housebuilding industry to deliver new housing, and not much to do with the planning system. The solution to all of this is through building more Council housing.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ywqvSYCIIUM
There was only one Summer of Love, and it was 1967.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65388335
Reminds me of a few PB sharpies, over the years. URW, in particular.
RIP
And yet employers appear to have reached the limits of how much they are willing/able to increase pay.
The sectors where there’s a million vacancies, are those where employers are still wedded to the idea that the minimum wage is the maximum wage. Funnily enough, many of the same industries who fired zero-hours staff, rather than furlough them during the pandemic.
Perhaps there needs to be a push for a hospitality workers’ Union? Labour Party?
But think of it like the difference between Private Rail Companies (which are generally pretty poor) and Private Concessions under government control (the TfL model for things like Overground, which seems to work pretty well).
If private companies are given clear direction ("run this train service to this specification", or "build a community with this mix of housing and these facilities at this rate") they can get on with optimising the efficiency of doing that. It seems to be part of the secret sauce that makes new settlements like Poundbury work.
If the only direction is to maximise shareholder value, the temptation to find shortcuts that increase profit but miss the point of the thing being provided is too great.
There's only one Summer of Love - 1967.
Although I was only 10, I was a precocious young lad and had a great time.
It was something to do with Truss having the potential to surprise on the upside, if I recall correctly.
It’s still anecdotal, but at least it comes from a place of experience.
The broader claim, though, that Brexit has delivered a sustainable rise in wages for the lower skilled, is basically copium for the berks that voted to Leave.
That said, 1996 was a pretty good summer too.
Plan accordingly.
Goodness me the shit that has come since.
Excellent work. Labour's "coalition of chaos" becomes more nonsensical every day.
The Post Office chief executive, Nick Read, agreed last week to return an undisclosed portion of the £455,000 bonus reported by the state-owned company in its annual report in March.
Kevin Hollinrake, a minister at the Department for Business and Trade, on Wednesday told parliament he had commissioned the government investigation into how the bonuses were awarded, as furious MPs said the Post Office had “added insult to injury” with the latest twist in the scandal.
“The situation is extremely concerning and deeply regrettable, and the Post Office is right to apologise,” Hollinrake said in response to an urgent question."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/10/uk-government-investigate-post-office-horizon-scandal-wrongly-paid-bonus-nick-read
So no, I wouldn't claim how ludicrous it is. And from your response, I guess you've got no idea yourself.
Anyone falling for that slogan is clearly a moron.
All the supermarkets are advertising higher wages. Lorry drivers. Pub staff…
I voted remain - but denying what I have to actually sign of (wage increases) strikes me as complete Donald Fucking Trump level shit.
The Thames Super Sewer project was kicked off (as an analysis/consultation) in 2001 and is due to be finally completed in 2025.
The Trump reference is a self own on your part.
So the Tories have been particularly dumb by saying they'll stop the boats. They have clearly lost all political ability after being in Government too long.
Whereas I had to sit with my iPad on zoom half listening to the speed awareness course whilst having PB up on my PC engaging in online chat with you lot. Which was definitely the path of least resistance.
My perception is that the margin of error with speed cameras is slowly being reduced. Thankfully Brexit (lol, as a committed remainer) is getting us off speed cameras in Europe - where the same thing is happening. The Swiss never gave much of a margin of error but I was told by my hotel owner last week that France is going the same way. Certainly, download Waze and France appears covered in police who have nothing better to do than sit at the side of the road trying to catch people who are speeding.
NEW THREAD
Then you have the new measuring standards, which are almost certainly inflating the figures a lot.
It's not that it's 'cheaper' to pump into surface waters; it's that it's all they can do. They have no choice (or I suppose they could allow the pipes to back up...). Fixing this is highly non-trivial; and one of the best ways is to try to separate rainwater run off from sewage. And it doesn't need a brain of Britain to see how difficult that is on existing developments...
Once again - wages at the bottom end have risen. Sometimes exceeding inflation. This is true from the evidence of my own business experience and working with suppliers.
This is required to get the workers.
That this is a driver for inflation in the U.K. is quite evident.
I get that people find it upsetting to talk about. But denying it is as stupid as the people who claim there is no housing shortage.