"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership.
I'm not sure if its a parody or not - it features a 'sun kissed' mortgage advisor called Tarquin plus this whiner:
Over in Wimbledon, a retired academic, Gareth Tudor-Williams, 68, was thankful for two decades on an interest-only mortgage; it enabled him to buy a five-bedroom house, which now holds three generations of his family, for £850,000 in 2003. He was paying £770 a month. Now, his payments are £2,700 — still on an interest-only basis — and set to rise further. “It’s utterly unsustainable for us. We’re eroding savings we hadn’t expected to use so early into retirement. We’re considering whether to sell up and count our losses.”
A house purchased in 2003 for £850,000 will now sell for about £2 to 2.5million, a profit of around £1.3 to £1.7milion, for sunk costs of around £180,000 in interest payments.
Indeed.
And yet they still wallow in self-pity and think they deserve a handout.
Plus there will be those who have been renting out property and had an income stream to match their interest payments.
Where in that story does the guy demand a handout? Indeed, it’s impossible to infer he’s “wallowing in self-pity” either.
You may not approve of his choices, but most probably the journalist simply asked him a question, and he gave them an answer.
Given that he thinks he's got 'losses' when he's likely got a capital gain of over a million then it does seem to me he's wallowing in self pity.
And given the damage property greed has done to this country and the further damage any sort of subsidy would cause then I'm quite willing to 'strike first' at anything which might be sympathetic to such an idea.
So to be clear, you accept he hasn’t demanded a handout, you just made that bit up.
And that he is ‘wallowing in self pity’ is your inference and a stretch at best.
I mean, I think his choices were wacky too (to my mind interest-only mortgages are inherently unsound), but just sneering at him and others with convenient assumptions really doesn’t help your argument.
I'm happy to admit my prejudice on this issue and broad brush it over any I suspect of self-pity and subsidy hunting - there's already been too many of these stories and too many idiot politicians willing to pander on this issue.
Now perhaps that will lead to me thinking unjustly of some but in this case a million pound capital gain would more than make up for any bad will from someone they've never met on an internet forum they've likely never read.
My sympathies are for those financially suffering through being in a younger generation and/or living in an expensive part of the country.
Phantom Thread is on BBC2 tonight. Is it worth watching? I haven't watched a film on TV for ages.
a really interesting and even sado-masochistic turn to it. Magnificent costumes too.
Enough about the Tory party in power from 2019-2023.
When was the last time we had a really well-dressed MP? Male or female? I'm not expecting Ascot hats, just something really well tailored and stylish?
I have this suspicion that political strategists in party headquarters advise all MPs to dress professionally (unless they want to performatively make a point), so get a decently fit suit Mr Corbyn etc, but not to look too well dressed and flashy, lest you look posh and out of touch. People lost their shit enough over Rishi's skinny fit short trouser legs.
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
How did the £14bn debts arise ?
"Thames Water's debt rose from £1.8bn to £8bn from 2000 to 2012 under its foreign owners; first the German utility RWE and, post-2006, a group of private equity funds domiciled in Luxembourg, marshalled by the Australian bank Macquarie. "
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
Although he's now remembered mostly for his mid 1950s exhausted look.
My mum fancied him, I recall - as a Russian immigrant fed up with wild-eyed Continental fanatics (she grew up in Gdansk in the 30s), he was her idea of what a decent English gentleman ought to look like. It's a type that has almosy died out, leaving only parodies like Rees-Mogg behind.
Although he's now remembered mostly for his mid 1950s exhausted look.
My mum fancied him, I recall - as a Russian immigrant fed up with wild-eyed Continental fanatics (she grew up in Gdansk in the 30s), he was her idea of what a decent English gentleman ought to look like. It's a type that has almosy died out, leaving only parodies like Rees-Mogg behind.
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
How did the £14bn debts arise ?
"Thames Water's debt rose from £1.8bn to £8bn from 2000 to 2012 under its foreign owners; first the German utility RWE and, post-2006, a group of private equity funds domiciled in Luxembourg, marshalled by the Australian bank Macquarie. "
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
My guess is that it will have been as part of a Maquarie infrastructure fund that debts will have really soared. Their whole MO is loading businesses up with as much debt as they can.
Phantom Thread is on BBC2 tonight. Is it worth watching? I haven't watched a film on TV for ages.
a really interesting and even sado-masochistic turn to it. Magnificent costumes too.
Enough about the Tory party in power from 2019-2023.
When was the last time we had a really well-dressed MP? Male or female? I'm not expecting Ascot hats, just something really well tailored and stylish?
Penny?
No, she's just beautiful as opposed to stylish. Perfectly competent/professional in her style, and obviously rather beautiful, but not necessarily with a flourish or the telling detail. Her outfit in the Coronation really showed her off at her Valkyrie best, but it's not something you can wear every day
When the Queen died and Prince Charles made his first broadcast as King, he was wearing a great suit, somewhat offset by a shirt with ridges (you can get straps for the back to pull the front taut), but he had a checked white-and-black hanky: a little detail, but it worked. In the last Craig Bond film, normally the gold standard for men in suits, when he gets out of the Aston Martin and buttons the jacket up it creases badly, which should not happen.
Most MPs, male or female, wear business basic: ok, but not great. Nothing that makes you go "fuck yeah"
Although he's now remembered mostly for his mid 1950s exhausted look.
My mum fancied him, I recall - as a Russian immigrant fed up with wild-eyed Continental fanatics (she grew up in Gdansk in the 30s), he was her idea of what a decent English gentleman ought to look like. It's a type that has almosy died out, leaving only parodies like Rees-Mogg behind.
Yes. I think that's about right: Eden was known for his style, and wasn't bad, although it's dated now. JRM always seems like he's displaying, which is strange because he's not pretending, he really is like that - you can't say he isn't genuine.
Although he's now remembered mostly for his mid 1950s exhausted look.
My mum fancied him, I recall - as a Russian immigrant fed up with wild-eyed Continental fanatics (she grew up in Gdansk in the 30s), he was her idea of what a decent English gentleman ought to look like. It's a type that has almosy died out, leaving only parodies like Rees-Mogg behind.
Yes. I think that's about right: Eden was known for his style, and wasn't bad, although it's dated now. JRM always seems like he's displaying, which is strange because he's not pretending, he really is like that - you can't say he isn't genuine.
"Displaying" should have been "cosplaying". Altho the sentence still works.
Although he's now remembered mostly for his mid 1950s exhausted look.
My mum fancied him, I recall - as a Russian immigrant fed up with wild-eyed Continental fanatics (she grew up in Gdansk in the 30s), he was her idea of what a decent English gentleman ought to look like. It's a type that has almosy died out, leaving only parodies like Rees-Mogg behind.
Yes. I think that's about right: Eden was known for his style, and wasn't bad, although it's dated now. JRM always seems like he's displaying, which is strange because he's not pretending, he really is like that - you can't say he isn't genuine.
Acting as if displaying when one isn't pretending intersects heavily with acting out. Anyway does put on mean not genuine? A person can put stuff on and it becomes genuine. But I doubt that in private when JRM is among friends he'd act as if he thought saying "floccinaucinihilipilification" was witty or intelligent.
Phantom Thread is on BBC2 tonight. Is it worth watching? I haven't watched a film on TV for ages.
a really interesting and even sado-masochistic turn to it. Magnificent costumes too.
Enough about the Tory party in power from 2019-2023.
When was the last time we had a really well-dressed MP? Male or female? I'm not expecting Ascot hats, just something really well tailored and stylish?
Penny?
No, she's just beautiful as opposed to stylish. Perfectly competent/professional in her style, and obviously rather beautiful, but not necessarily with a flourish or the telling detail. Her outfit in the Coronation really showed her off at her Valkyrie best, but it's not something you can wear every day
When the Queen died and Prince Charles made his first broadcast as King, he was wearing a great suit, somewhat offset by a shirt with ridges (you can get straps for the back to pull the front taut), but he had a checked white-and-black hanky: a little detail, but it worked. In the last Craig Bond film, normally the gold standard for men in suits, when he gets out of the Aston Martin and buttons the jacket up it creases badly, which should not happen.
Most MPs, male or female, wear business basic: ok, but not great. Nothing that makes you go "fuck yeah"
If I had any kind of view based on what most MPs wear, what I'd be saying to myself is "Get a life".
Had some really dispiriting conversations with apprentices, in my former role, shortly before Covid, about where they saw themselves age 35? Quite a few, unprompted, said "retired, owning and renting out three or four properties and using the rent to buy more." That was the scale of their ambition. That's gone. For which, much thanks.
There's not much to celebrate on that front. All that a sustained period of high interest rates will do - absent massive investment in the construction of social as well as open market housing, which probably isn't going to happen - is (i) a greater shortage of private rentals, commanding even higher prices, followed by (ii) a slight easing of the market, as new landlords enter it and existing ones expand their portfolios.
I suspect that the medium term consequence of the current upheaval will simply be to raise the bar for entry into being a rentier, so that you have to be wealthier (buying properties outright, or with a large deposit to cut the LTV on the mortgage) to enter the game. So there'll be slightly fewer landlords, owning a slightly large number of properties on average, getting richer, faster.
BTL was always popular because it's such an efficient extractive practice: tenants are cash cows who can be milked hard for profit, and relieved of a large fraction of their own incomes for minimal effort - especially where the landlord is raking in enough to be able to afford to palm off all the hassle of managing their property to a lettings agency if they want to. For those who have enough spare capital to make a big investment at the outset, it's still money for old rope.
Had some really dispiriting conversations with apprentices, in my former role, shortly before Covid, about where they saw themselves age 35? Quite a few, unprompted, said "retired, owning and renting out three or four properties and using the rent to buy more." That was the scale of their ambition. That's gone. For which, much thanks.
There's not much to celebrate on that front. All that a sustained period of high interest rates will do - absent massive investment in the construction of social as well as open market housing, which probably isn't going to happen - is (i) a greater shortage of private rentals, commanding even higher prices, followed by (ii) a slight easing of the market, as new landlords enter it and existing ones expand their portfolios.
I suspect that the medium term consequence of the current upheaval will simply be to raise the bar for entry into being a rentier, so that you have to be wealthier (buying properties outright, or with a large deposit to cut the LTV on the mortgage) to enter the game. So there'll be slightly fewer landlords, owning a slightly large number of properties on average, getting richer, faster.
BTL was always popular because it's such an efficient extractive practice: tenants are cash cows who can be milked hard for profit, and relieved of a large fraction of their own incomes for minimal effort - especially where the landlord is raking in enough to be able to afford to palm off all the hassle of managing their property to a lettings agency if they want to. For those who have enough spare capital to make a big investment at the outset, it's still money for old rope.
See the Thames Water debt story earlier and apply it to housing. My guess is foreign private equity firms will become huge landlords, mortgage their estates up to the hilt, and enjoy a steady flow of rents paid abroad in some tax haven or other. In other words, the DWP will be paying housing benefits abroad and the Treasury will see none of it back as tax.
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
How did the £14bn debts arise ?
"Thames Water's debt rose from £1.8bn to £8bn from 2000 to 2012 under its foreign owners; first the German utility RWE and, post-2006, a group of private equity funds domiciled in Luxembourg, marshalled by the Australian bank Macquarie. "
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
It's quite simple - extract as much cash from the business as possible. The bulk of the proceeds will have been paid out in dividends, not used for investment in the business. Decades of failed regulation..
The owners don't care if it goes bust or nationalised as they've already taken their profit.
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
How did the £14bn debts arise ?
"Thames Water's debt rose from £1.8bn to £8bn from 2000 to 2012 under its foreign owners; first the German utility RWE and, post-2006, a group of private equity funds domiciled in Luxembourg, marshalled by the Australian bank Macquarie. "
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
It's quite simple - extract as much cash from the business as possible. The bulk of the proceeds will have been paid out in dividends, not used for investment in the business. Decades of failed regulation..
The owners don't care if it goes bust or nationalised as they've already taken their profit.
The absolute joke with these utilities is that he owners, having robbed us blind for years, were proposing to issue extra debt to begin to address the problem, with the proviso that the regulator allow price increases to fully service it.
Had some really dispiriting conversations with apprentices, in my former role, shortly before Covid, about where they saw themselves age 35? Quite a few, unprompted, said "retired, owning and renting out three or four properties and using the rent to buy more." That was the scale of their ambition. That's gone. For which, much thanks.
There's not much to celebrate on that front. All that a sustained period of high interest rates will do - absent massive investment in the construction of social as well as open market housing, which probably isn't going to happen - is (i) a greater shortage of private rentals, commanding even higher prices, followed by (ii) a slight easing of the market, as new landlords enter it and existing ones expand their portfolios.
I suspect that the medium term consequence of the current upheaval will simply be to raise the bar for entry into being a rentier, so that you have to be wealthier (buying properties outright, or with a large deposit to cut the LTV on the mortgage) to enter the game. So there'll be slightly fewer landlords, owning a slightly large number of properties on average, getting richer, faster.
BTL was always popular because it's such an efficient extractive practice: tenants are cash cows who can be milked hard for profit, and relieved of a large fraction of their own incomes for minimal effort - especially where the landlord is raking in enough to be able to afford to palm off all the hassle of managing their property to a lettings agency if they want to. For those who have enough spare capital to make a big investment at the outset, it's still money for old rope.
See the Thames Water debt story earlier and apply it to housing. My guess is foreign private equity firms will become huge landlords, mortgage their estates up to the hilt, and enjoy a steady flow of rents paid abroad in some tax haven or other. In other words, the DWP will be paying housing benefits abroad and the Treasury will see none of it back as tax.
I stand to be corrected by the course of events, but I think the one thing we're probably not going to see is the advent of large institutional investors, foreign or domestic, buying up swathes of individual UK residential properties. If you end up owning, for arguments' sake, 5,000 rental houses then you have the administrative burden of micromanaging them all individually - 5,000 buildings to maintain, 5,000 tenants to deal with, the constant to-and-fro of tenants and marketing vacant units, etc., etc. It's going to be a lot of work for them. So, blocks of flats in prime central London, perhaps. Three bedroom semis dotted all over the North of England, less likely.
As a cottage industry, however - say, for people who have spare cash rotting in the bank or poorly performing investments, and lack either a sufficiently large sum to trade up to a nicer house, or the will or need to do so - buying up a flat and extracting wealth from the tenant (whilst also bagging a significant capital gain from escalating prices) can be a very attractive prospect.
As long as the rental income after tax and expenses exceeds what you'd get from interest on a bank deposit, you can earn all that extra money for doing nothing and look forward to a likely big windfall when you eventually decide to offload the property again (because there's no particular reason to suppose that house building is going to keep up with the rate of population growth going forward, meaning that demand ought to continue to accelerate ahead of supply and thus drive significant property price inflation in the long term.) If you're a "Homes under the Hammer"-type buyer - someone with the skills and/or contacts to buy a wreck cheaply and get it refurbed - you stand to do even better.
Interesting figures being bandied around on facebook that the average dividend payment for Thames Water investors seems to have been an average of 2bn a year since 1991, and that the last reservoir was also built in 1991.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
I don't know where these polls come from but they just don't tally with the opinion on the street. There's zero enthusiasm, only deep distrust, for Starmerite Labour, certainly in the parts of the Red Wall that I travel around. One doesn't wish to be conspiratorial, but I call BS on these polls. I think that's what certain parties WANT us to think.
I can't understand why anyone would vote for that greasy freak Starmer and his dangerous far-right fascists (further right than the Tories even).
Phantom Thread is on BBC2 tonight. Is it worth watching? I haven't watched a film on TV for ages.
a really interesting and even sado-masochistic turn to it. Magnificent costumes too.
Enough about the Tory party in power from 2019-2023.
When was the last time we had a really well-dressed MP? Male or female? I'm not expecting Ascot hats, just something really well tailored and stylish?
Penny?
No, she's just beautiful as opposed to stylish. Perfectly competent/professional in her style, and obviously rather beautiful, but not necessarily with a flourish or the telling detail. Her outfit in the Coronation really showed her off at her Valkyrie best, but it's not something you can wear every day
When the Queen died and Prince Charles made his first broadcast as King, he was wearing a great suit, somewhat offset by a shirt with ridges (you can get straps for the back to pull the front taut), but he had a checked white-and-black hanky: a little detail, but it worked. In the last Craig Bond film, normally the gold standard for men in suits, when he gets out of the Aston Martin and buttons the jacket up it creases badly, which should not happen.
Most MPs, male or female, wear business basic: ok, but not great. Nothing that makes you go "fuck yeah"
If I had any kind of view based on what most MPs wear, what I'd be saying to myself is "Get a life".
I wouldn't have thought the Cons have given up on Grimsby or Stockton South yet. However, the likely battleground at the GE will be far far beyond most of these forty constituencies. Little in politics is certain but that is about as close to it as you can get!
Tory over performing areas probably midlands and poorer outer London/M25 fringe playing on ULEZ. Shafted elsewhere though and hard to see much recovery within 18 months.
The Ulez-X will have been in force over a year by the likely time of the GE. In all likelihood, people will have come to terms with it by then.
I’m far from sure that the Ulez play is the big vote winning the Tories think it is.
Yes, I’d like to see some polling on ULEZ.
Personally, I live in Zone 3 and am a big supporter of it. It’s the one thing Khan has done that I can get behind enthusiastically. That’s because it’s proven to reduce pollution and I’m very much in favour of cleaner air. But maybe I’m just unusual in that, and outer Londoners want to continue to live in an asthma inducing smog so long as it means they can keep their diesel Volvo Estate?
Close! We're in Zone 4, and we've got a diesel Volvo saloon :
So, does that mean you’re anti?
Yes, we got a letter from TfL via the DVLA explaining what's happening in August - it openly admits ULEZ is a revenue-earning exercise "to fund public transport". I mean £12.50 a DAY?
24 hours a day seven days a week as well. Should have started at £5 a day for outer London and only 7-7 when congestion is a problem.
Why? It’s been operating fine inside the North Circular for years. London needs cleaner air. You don’t get something for nothing.
Why does London *need* cleaner air than is growingly already the case? It seemed to survive OK when it had air thick with soot. Petrol and diesel cars are on the way out, and cars at any rate are pensioned off and their replacements ever cleaner and more efficient. This is just yet another confected crisis to get people to sacrifice freedoms that they wouldn't otherwise be prepared to.
There are clearly negative health outcomes from breathing in diesel particulates, particulates on the tube, ozone/NO2/CO from car engines etc.
I don't think anyone denies that. It's going to be a part of the reason why the incidence of lung diseases in children are 2-3x higher in urban that in rural areas.
Now, we can argue about cost-benefit, if you like, but I don't think many people would suggest it's *good* to breathe in pollution.
I am not saying that it is good to inhale polluted air frequently. I am making the argument that this is an unjust infringement of personal liberty, and that, along with most unjust infringements of liberty these days, we're morally blackmailed with a 'crisis' whereby opponents of the policy are 'happy with children dying'. Yet when we look at the actual impact of (for example) covid lockdowns and school closures, they were far more disastrous for children than non-implementation would have been.
I'd much rather the government taxed something we want less of (like pollution), than something we want more of (like work), wouldn't you?
Well, yes... up to a point. If the government replaces tax revenue from tax on income with tax revenue from a tax on pollution, then the public finances are screwed if everyone responds to the tax signal and stops polluting.
Ideally "sin" taxes such as taxes on pollution, or on tobacco, carbon, etc, should all be used on spending for alternatives that you can easily cut if the income from those taxes drops to nothing - e.g. income from carbon taxes would be better spent on solar panels than on health services.
One story to look out for in a few years time is the Mayor of London facing problems balancing their budget, because people switched to cleaner cars more quickly than forecast, and so the ULEZ doesn't raise as much money as expected.
“What is tax for?” is going to be the topic of one of my upcoming tax columns. I don’t think we are very good at articulating this, in Britain or elsewhere. Sin taxes are a very interesting example where the primary intention isn’t supposed to be revenue raising, as indeed are customs duties.
I think customs duties are intended to be revenue-raising. At least historically they were the principal source of tax revenue.
Comments
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12240519/Government-draws-contingency-plans-doubts-grow-Thames-Water-service-14bn-debts.html
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership.
Now perhaps that will lead to me thinking unjustly of some but in this case a million pound capital gain would more than make up for any bad will from someone they've never met on an internet forum they've likely never read.
My sympathies are for those financially suffering through being in a younger generation and/or living in an expensive part of the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Eden_hat
Although he's now remembered mostly for his mid 1950s exhausted look.
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
When the Queen died and Prince Charles made his first broadcast as King, he was wearing a great suit, somewhat offset by a shirt with ridges (you can get straps for the back to pull the front taut), but he had a checked white-and-black hanky: a little detail, but it worked. In the last Craig Bond film, normally the gold standard for men in suits, when he gets out of the Aston Martin and buttons the jacket up it creases badly, which should not happen.
Most MPs, male or female, wear business basic: ok, but not great. Nothing that makes you go "fuck yeah"
Every politician, broadsheet hack and nepo baby now insists on being seen there
Julie Birchill"
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/06/27/theres-nothing-rebellious-about-glastonbury/
I suspect that the medium term consequence of the current upheaval will simply be to raise the bar for entry into being a rentier, so that you have to be wealthier (buying properties outright, or with a large deposit to cut the LTV on the mortgage) to enter the game. So there'll be slightly fewer landlords, owning a slightly large number of properties on average, getting richer, faster.
BTL was always popular because it's such an efficient extractive practice: tenants are cash cows who can be milked hard for profit, and relieved of a large fraction of their own incomes for minimal effort - especially where the landlord is raking in enough to be able to afford to palm off all the hassle of managing their property to a lettings agency if they want to. For those who have enough spare capital to make a big investment at the outset, it's still money for old rope.
Decades of failed regulation..
The owners don't care if it goes bust or nationalised as they've already taken their profit.
RFK Jr. Claims ‘Vaccine Research’ Likely Responsible for HIV and the Spanish Flu
https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1673867759292149760
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, may have believed he had support in Russia’s military.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/politics/russian-general-prigozhin-rebellion.html?smid=tw-share
As a cottage industry, however - say, for people who have spare cash rotting in the bank or poorly performing investments, and lack either a sufficiently large sum to trade up to a nicer house, or the will or need to do so - buying up a flat and extracting wealth from the tenant (whilst also bagging a significant capital gain from escalating prices) can be a very attractive prospect.
As long as the rental income after tax and expenses exceeds what you'd get from interest on a bank deposit, you can earn all that extra money for doing nothing and look forward to a likely big windfall when you eventually decide to offload the property again (because there's no particular reason to suppose that house building is going to keep up with the rate of population growth going forward, meaning that demand ought to continue to accelerate ahead of supply and thus drive significant property price inflation in the long term.) If you're a "Homes under the Hammer"-type buyer - someone with the skills and/or contacts to buy a wreck cheaply and get it refurbed - you stand to do even better.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
I can't understand why anyone would vote for that greasy freak Starmer and his dangerous far-right fascists (further right than the Tories even).