Just back after four weeks in the Greek islands, a few observations:
- much busier than 2022 - passport queues non-existent on arriving and leaving despite need for stamps - cost of eating out slightly higher than 2022 but portion size and quality noticeably affected - weather unusually unsettled, with rain some days and cool wind most days, poorer weather than back home in Yorkshire Dales - Americans by far the highest proportion of tourist, Chinese tourists returning, no Russians - designer boutiques and cocktail bars driving out traditional businesses even on less popular islands
Overall, the traditional Greek Island experience is getting harder to find.
Yup. This is why I've previously recommended people to go to Greece before it's very different.
There still a few islands where the older experience can be found, but not as many. There's also many unexplored parts of the mainland. It's the same for Athens, as I've said many times ; go before a city that in some areas now has the balance of spontaneity and affluence of 1990's London, turns into another globocity.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
If we did that we would never get another job with any LA or large company. This situation is endemic. The hypocrisy that exists with people who moan about corrupt politicians but have no problems taking cash or freebies. A buyer for a large Construction company once asked us to pay for his family holiday to Barbados in return for the award of a contract.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Isn't part of the equation, which you don't mention, the collapse in building social housing? The difference between now and the '60s/'70s is that there used to be lots of council housing stock being built.
There are also photos on Sunak’s social media accounts of him using regular permanent ink pens to actually sign documents, including an economic agreement with India in October 2020 when he was chancellor...
Wishy-washy Rishi?
Just wait till he reveals his progress on tackling the two pledges.
What pledges ? Show me where he wrote them down...
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I hope you're right, but with the MP selections and the membership suspensions I only really see the possibility of a pretty right wing Labour party under SKS. That he and Reeves are spending all their airtime talking about "fiscal rules" rather than saying that investment could solve so many problems and even help tackle the current inflation crisis is really aggravating to me.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
Aside arguably from the Atlee government of 1945, are there many historical precedents for an elected Labour government being much more radical than the anodyne version that they first presented to make themselves palatable to the the British/English voter? In any case I believe that years of policy contortions to gain electoral credibility tend to make the contorted end up believing that is their natural posture.
Depends how you define radical. Between 1964 and 1970, the death penalty was abolished, homosexuality was legalised, the voting age was lowered, there was major reform of abortion laws and the university sector was greatly expanded, including the creation of the Open University. The 1974 to 1979 government introduced the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Relations Act. Under New Labour there were also a number of big reforms, including civil partnerships, the minimum wage, devolution etc. All that said, what Labour has consistently failed to do in government is to challenge the economic and fiscal consensus. That failure has undoubtedly played a part in getting us to where we are today.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
When people simlutaneously see that, and companies like Thames Water also simultaneously being bailed out by the government because they've been loaded with debt under the private equity model, the anger is going to be even greater.
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
@DavidL is right in saying that the trade deficit underlies all these problems. It has been financed by selling off assets overseas, such as utilities to Maquarie etc. It isn't a viable way of continuing.
Well, it's not really intended in that way. And now the assets have been sold, customer payments and government subsidies flow out of the country which makes the trade deficit worse. Water and the other utilities, as well as public transport, are effectively invisible imports from that point of view. Not to mention football clubs.
Bet plenty of Tories made a killing out of the selloffs.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
A fair old horror story, Mr Hughes. But was the local authority in question run on the Cabinet system which the Tories set up? From what I have seen, there is a lot of centralised power and delegated decision-taking in this system, and precious little proper scrutiny, as we used to have in the old committee system.
Oh dear, the Cabinet system was mandated for all Councils (above a certain size) by the Blair Labour government. Under "Oonkle" Eric Pickles, they were free to revert back to the Committee system if they wished.
Just back after four weeks in the Greek islands, a few observations:
- much busier than 2022 - passport queues non-existent on arriving and leaving despite need for stamps - cost of eating out slightly higher than 2022 but portion size and quality noticeably affected - weather unusually unsettled, with rain some days and cool wind most days, poorer weather than back home in Yorkshire Dales - Americans by far the highest proportion of tourist, Chinese tourists returning, no Russians - designer boutiques and cocktail bars driving out traditional businesses even on less popular islands
Overall, the traditional Greek Island experience is getting harder to find.
We noticed much higher prices on our French cycle ride than our previous one for accommodation and food.
Two other things worth noting is that prices in the middle of nowhere in France are so much lower than in towns. Much much more so than in the UK and we always assume everyone can speak English (or at least some) which again is true in towns, but in the rural areas we found most people spoke none at all. Translate on the phone was very useful and also made communicating great fun.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Appalling. I know this stuff was rife in the past, but I thought that really was in the past now. If I were you I would be fighting this, although I know the pragmatic thing to do (for your health) is probably to suck it up.
How do they not get caught if it is so obviously happening?
Would a new Tory leader do better than Rishi? Doubtful. There is one element in this which wonks, anoraks, leaders, ambitious people and hacks misunderestimate.
The more broadly conservative you are, the more your objection is not to any particular change proposed, but to the proposal of change itself. Five leaders since 2016 will be seen by political writers, PBers etc as interesting and full of stuff to talk about. Millions of people, rightly, see it as a sign of being useless, unprincipled short term opportunists.
If David Cameron had been decently honourable ("the UK would flourish if it votes to leave the EU, the decision is your's") he would still be PM and the UK and Tory party would be in a rather different place.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Isn't part of the equation, which you don't mention, the collapse in building social housing? The difference between now and the '60s/'70s is that there used to be lots of council housing stock being built.
I don't think so, no.
A house is a house, is a house.
Whether a house is social housing, or private, either way its a home and there's no need for it to be one class or the other.
The problem is people standing in the way of getting anything built at all.
As I've said repeatedly, the single city of Tokyo (population less than 14 million) has been having more houses built than the entire country of England put together.
That's not because Tokyo is going gangbusters on social housing. Its because land zoned for residential can be built on without asking your neighbours or politicians for permission first, and its also because land is taxed so nobody wants to hold onto land that is zoned for residential without it actually having a home or similar on it.
People don’t just want a change from the Tories just because it’s time for a change. People want a change because the Government has been incompetent, biased in favour of boomers, and has made many people poorer. Yes, the country is in a mess because of continuing trade deficits, and lack of investment in infrastructure, but does Labour have the guts to explain why this is to the voters in terms they can understand? Do they also have the guts to start redressing the imbalance, by favouring UK owned business and by repatriating assets? Foreign ownership of UK infrastructure could be made less advantageous by giving e.g. Ofgem and Ofwat proper enforcement powers with punitive fines. If shareholders don’t like it, they can exchange their shares for UK gilts.
They will be Tory lite at very best and most likely just cheeks of the same arse
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Appalling. I know this stuff was rife in the past, but I thought that really was in the past now. If I were you I would be fighting this, although I know the pragmatic thing to do (for your health) is probably to suck it up.
How do they not get caught if it is so obviously happening?
Politics. Accusations of "brown envelopes" used as a political stick, where the accusation is one councillor defaming another councillor of being corrupt. They're almost certainly not, with any such activity happening within the officers who actually make the decisions.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Isn't part of the equation, which you don't mention, the collapse in building social housing? The difference between now and the '60s/'70s is that there used to be lots of council housing stock being built.
I don't think so, no.
A house is a house, is a house.
Whether a house is social housing, or private, either way its a home and there's no need for it to be one class or the other.
The problem is people standing in the way of getting anything built at all.
As I've said repeatedly, the single city of Tokyo (population less than 14 million) has been having more houses built than the entire country of England put together.
That's not because Tokyo is going gangbusters on social housing. Its because land zoned for residential can be built on without asking your neighbours or politicians for permission first, and its also because land is taxed so nobody wants to hold onto land that is zoned for residential without it actually having a home or similar on it.
Yes, but social housing was being built with, I'm guessing, the same planning laws...? A house is a house is a house, so all that social housing being built meant there were lots of houses. Take away all that social housing building and don't sufficiently replace it, bingo, problems.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
If we did that we would never get another job with any LA or large company. This situation is endemic. The hypocrisy that exists with people who moan about corrupt politicians but have no problems taking cash or freebies. A buyer for a large Construction company once asked us to pay for his family holiday to Barbados in return for the award of a contract.
Sounds like the sort of thing a decent investigative reporter should be able to get their teeth into.
People don’t just want a change from the Tories just because it’s time for a change. People want a change because the Government has been incompetent, biased in favour of boomers, and has made many people poorer. Yes, the country is in a mess because of continuing trade deficits, and lack of investment in infrastructure, but does Labour have the guts to explain why this is to the voters in terms they can understand? Do they also have the guts to start redressing the imbalance, by favouring UK owned business and by repatriating assets? Foreign ownership of UK infrastructure could be made less advantageous by giving e.g. Ofgem and Ofwat proper enforcement powers with punitive fines. If shareholders don’t like it, they can exchange their shares for UK gilts.
They will be Tory lite at very best and most likely just cheeks of the same arse
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
It si only insurance to rebuild , bears no relation to the actual value of the house or rebuilding it either
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
If we did that we would never get another job with any LA or large company. This situation is endemic. The hypocrisy that exists with people who moan about corrupt politicians but have no problems taking cash or freebies. A buyer for a large Construction company once asked us to pay for his family holiday to Barbados in return for the award of a contract.
Sounds like the sort of thing a decent investigative reporter should be able to get their teeth into.
Maybe by finding contractors who have had to go out of business as a result.
Would a new Tory leader do better than Rishi? Doubtful. There is one element in this which wonks, anoraks, leaders, ambitious people and hacks misunderestimate.
The more broadly conservative you are, the more your objection is not to any particular change proposed, but to the proposal of change itself. Five leaders since 2016 will be seen by political writers, PBers etc as interesting and full of stuff to talk about. Millions of people, rightly, see it as a sign of being useless, unprincipled short term opportunists.
If David Cameron had been decently honourable ("the UK would flourish if it votes to leave the EU, the decision is your's") he would still be PM and the UK and Tory party would be in a rather different place.
What I don't see from most Tories is a sense of realism. The Major government was absolutely in acceptance of both the mess and the pain caused. Hence "yes it hurt, yes it worked". Here we have Tories denying there is a problem, denying that it is hurting, and trying to deflect any unhappiness at a sarcastic note left by the outgoing labour team 13 years ago.
Tories seem to be in utter denial. On Teesside the grift is off the scale, but Ben Nothing To See Houchen and Simon That's Defamation Clarke think they are right and everyone else is wrong. Especially when the things they lied about having already happened then start to happen. Meanwhile Middlesbrough and surrounding towns slide further into visible decline, squalour and hopelessness, whilst the Tories keep insisting how Brilliant everything is and don't let Labour stop (our grifting).
Regarding Thames Water, I see no problem with it collapsing and wiping out shareholders.
There's also no rush for the government to buy out of administration if it means a bad deal taking into account the net debt. Bond holders should also suffer losses if there's no private market solution that values it positively.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Isn't part of the equation, which you don't mention, the collapse in building social housing? The difference between now and the '60s/'70s is that there used to be lots of council housing stock being built.
I don't think so, no.
A house is a house, is a house.
Whether a house is social housing, or private, either way its a home and there's no need for it to be one class or the other.
The problem is people standing in the way of getting anything built at all.
As I've said repeatedly, the single city of Tokyo (population less than 14 million) has been having more houses built than the entire country of England put together.
That's not because Tokyo is going gangbusters on social housing. Its because land zoned for residential can be built on without asking your neighbours or politicians for permission first, and its also because land is taxed so nobody wants to hold onto land that is zoned for residential without it actually having a home or similar on it.
Yes, but social housing was being built with, I'm guessing, the same planning laws...? A house is a house is a house, so all that social housing being built meant there were lots of houses. Take away all that social housing building and don't sufficiently replace it, bingo, problems.
The planning laws were changed, as was the green belt etc - it used to be much smaller.
If social housing could be built on top of other housing, then nothing wrong with that in my eyes. My preferred solution if going down that path would be to have Councils able to build but keeping Right to Buy on any of those new homes, and having the proceeds from any sales reinvested to build new homes again.
However if planning were seriously reformed, and the oligopoly of housing developers broken up by modernising to zoning instead of planning, then there would be no need for that.
Either way a solution is needed, and since the Tories won't go with deregulation then the state building again is likely to be the outcome that happens since that's what Labour will prefer.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Isn't part of the equation, which you don't mention, the collapse in building social housing? The difference between now and the '60s/'70s is that there used to be lots of council housing stock being built.
I don't think so, no.
A house is a house, is a house.
Whether a house is social housing, or private, either way its a home and there's no need for it to be one class or the other.
The problem is people standing in the way of getting anything built at all.
As I've said repeatedly, the single city of Tokyo (population less than 14 million) has been having more houses built than the entire country of England put together.
That's not because Tokyo is going gangbusters on social housing. Its because land zoned for residential can be built on without asking your neighbours or politicians for permission first, and its also because land is taxed so nobody wants to hold onto land that is zoned for residential without it actually having a home or similar on it.
Yes, but social housing was being built with, I'm guessing, the same planning laws...? A house is a house is a house, so all that social housing being built meant there were lots of houses. Take away all that social housing building and don't sufficiently replace it, bingo, problems.
It's more that we need to see the entire planning, building thing as a single system. Changing the number of planning permissions issued hasn't increased building. Why? Well, when you look at areas -
- where it *has* increased, there are multiple builders competing against each other. See the mad scramble to build flats in London. Any piece of land is built on - between railways tracks and motorways, even. - - where it hasn't - either a local monopoly or small oligopoly (2 or 3) of the big builders.
Adam Smith explained, at some length, the problems with monopolies.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
If we did that we would never get another job with any LA or large company. This situation is endemic. The hypocrisy that exists with people who moan about corrupt politicians but have no problems taking cash or freebies. A buyer for a large Construction company once asked us to pay for his family holiday to Barbados in return for the award of a contract.
Sounds like the sort of thing a decent investigative reporter should be able to get their teeth into.
Though at local level, we don't have many reporters any more, because we all decided we couldn't be bothered to buy a local paper.
And with schools, you have the additional problem that, unless they really stuff up, academies are basically accountable to themselves.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
It si only insurance to rebuild , bears no relation to the actual value of the house or rebuilding it either
Come to think of it, could be a nice little earner for a builder who gets the job. In the event of a claim, who selects the builder to rebuild the house?
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
It si only insurance to rebuild , bears no relation to the actual value of the house or rebuilding it either
Come to think of it, could be a nice little earner for a builder who gets the job. In the event of a claim, who selects the builder to rebuild the house?
Imagine given cost it would be the insurance company for certain.
Regarding Thames Water, I see no problem with it collapsing and wiping out shareholders.
There's also no rush for the government to buy out of administration if it means a bad deal taking into account the net debt. Bond holders should also suffer losses if there's no private market solution that values it positively.
Shareholders should lose everything Bond holders equally should be told that we won't be billing out water companies due to the way shareholders have abused loans to pay dividends rather than invest.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
It si only insurance to rebuild , bears no relation to the actual value of the house or rebuilding it either
Come to think of it, could be a nice little earner for a builder who gets the job. In the event of a claim, who selects the builder to rebuild the house?
Think clearing teh site would be a big expense as well, given all the green taxes etc
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
It si only insurance to rebuild , bears no relation to the actual value of the house or rebuilding it either
Come to think of it, could be a nice little earner for a builder who gets the job. In the event of a claim, who selects the builder to rebuild the house?
Its also in an insurance firms interests to inflate the rebuild value of a property as then they can claim it is potentially "underinsured" if a property doesn't have that inflated value and can diminish payouts to damage as a result.
We had that with a commercial property a few years ago. The roof got damaged in a storm, and so we put in a claim, the insurance had not long been renewed but the firm sent out a surveyor who then put in an absurdly huge rebuild value for the property. The insurers then said our property was underinsured (despite having just renewed it with them), and so they only repaid 60% of what we paid out to have the roof repaired.
Kemi Badenoch is favourite to be next Tory leader but she might prefer to wait until after the next election. Otherwise it would likely be a very brief leadership.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
It si only insurance to rebuild , bears no relation to the actual value of the house or rebuilding it either
Come to think of it, could be a nice little earner for a builder who gets the job. In the event of a claim, who selects the builder to rebuild the house?
Think clearing teh site would be a big expense as well, given all the green taxes etc
Not really.
All you need is to own an "Eco Waste" company as part of your little stack of building related companies. You charge yourself a fortune to cart the rubble away.
The sale, by the "Eco Waste" company, of gravel, sand, topsoil and hardcore is noticed by nearly no-one outside the trade.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
It also ignores the fact that benefits that are not the state pension, so hardly preferred voters, and the minimum wage, again hardly preferred voters, also went up by the same amount as pensions.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Who has been offered a 1% pay increase by the govt ?
Regarding Thames Water, I see no problem with it collapsing and wiping out shareholders.
There's also no rush for the government to buy out of administration if it means a bad deal taking into account the net debt. Bond holders should also suffer losses if there's no private market solution that values it positively.
Shareholders should lose everything Bond holders equally should be told that we won't be billing out water companies due to the way shareholders have abused loans to pay dividends rather than invest.
If the company goes bust then bondholders should lose everything, or get pennies on the pound based on whatever assets were remaining. They've made a bad loan to a private entity, that's not the taxpayers responsibility.
Whether a loan was used to pay dividends or invest is not really the issue, since its a private firm either way, the bond holders haven't done their due diligence if they were making loans to a firm that couldn't repay it either way.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
They'll get in because natural Conservative voters are going to have a serious think about which way they'll vote, stay at home or switch this time whereas Labour will get every soft left, marxist and a whole bunch of centrish voters out as normal. You're right about personally examining which way you're going to vote and examining that thought (As I did for the referendum), but a couple of PBers not ticking the box for Starmer won't stop the Conservatives being completely shellacked at the ballot box.
I would be surprised however if the Conservatives suffered a loss of 172 seats as they did in 1997.* Not only is Labour starting from much further back, but Starmer is no Blair.
Seeing them lose 100 seats is not by any means unrealistic. But the statements I'm seeing now remind me of the comments made by many, including me, about how Cameron would easily hammer Brown and win a majority of 100. And yes, Brown performed abysmally in 2010 - the lowest share of the vote for any governing or recently governing party since 1784 - but Cameron was still well short.
I will believe in Labour landslides if and when I see them.
*The figure in the header is a notional one adjusted for boundary changes. It is worth remembering that on the new boundaries the Tories would gain around 10 seats.
Starmer has three advantages Cameron didn't have though: 1) Scotland - the SCONS did abysmally and one only won seat north of the border. By contrast, Labour should win at least a dozen seats (the SNP need a lead of around 10% for Labour to win fewer) and (per the YouGOV MRP and Panelbase poll) actually seem to have a shot at being the largest party. Humsa isn't very good and the SNP's woes (what with the police investigation and Humsa being forced by the Greens to take the GRR bill to the UK Supreme Court) seem likely to continue for a while yet. 2) No third party rival in England or Wales - unlike 2015, in 2010 Cameron failed to win back many of the seats the Tories lost to the Lib Dems in the 1990s. By contrast, the only party Labour needs to win seats from south of the border are the Tories. And bar a couple of exceptions (Wimbledon? Sheffield Hallam?), there are no seats where Labour are going to be in a fight with the Liberal Democrats. As for Farage, contrary to the silly claims Reform could hold the balance of power if he came back, any return to the frontline politics for him will damage the Tories more than it does Labour. 3) Tactical voting - the local elections suggest there will be a lot of anti-Tory tactical voting at the next election. This will likely give Labour at least another 10-15 seats. Landslide? Perhaps not. But at the moment it looks likely Starmer will have a healthy working majority.
Kemi Badenoch is favourite to be next Tory leader but she might prefer to wait until after the next election. Otherwise it would likely be a very brief leadership.
Yes - they can all see the iceberg ahead and don’t want to be on the bridge when it hits. Sunak will go down with the ship.
Regarding Thames Water, I see no problem with it collapsing and wiping out shareholders.
There's also no rush for the government to buy out of administration if it means a bad deal taking into account the net debt. Bond holders should also suffer losses if there's no private market solution that values it positively.
Shareholders should lose everything Bond holders equally should be told that we won't be billing out water companies due to the way shareholders have abused loans to pay dividends rather than invest.
Two of the biggest beneficiaries - the German Group RWE (owners from 2001 until 2006, selling it for for more than twice what they paid for it), and Macquarie (who divested their remaining stake five years ago) - will be completely untroubled by any of that.
The Kuwait Investment Authority and other assorted bods might not be very happy.
Football: bit of a guess, though this worked out well last time on Napoli, but backed Lazio each way to top Serie A (fifth the odds top 3) at 14 with Ladbrokes, boosted. They had a strong second half of the season just gone and finished 2nd.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
They'll get in because natural Conservative voters are going to have a serious think about which way they'll vote, stay at home or switch this time whereas Labour will get every soft left, marxist and a whole bunch of centrish voters out as normal. You're right about personally examining which way you're going to vote and examining that thought (As I did for the referendum), but a couple of PBers not ticking the box for Starmer won't stop the Conservatives being completely shellacked at the ballot box.
I would be surprised however if the Conservatives suffered a loss of 172 seats as they did in 1997.* Not only is Labour starting from much further back, but Starmer is no Blair.
Seeing them lose 100 seats is not by any means unrealistic. But the statements I'm seeing now remind me of the comments made by many, including me, about how Cameron would easily hammer Brown and win a majority of 100. And yes, Brown performed abysmally in 2010 - the lowest share of the vote for any governing or recently governing party since 1784 - but Cameron was still well short.
I will believe in Labour landslides if and when I see them.
*The figure in the header is a notional one adjusted for boundary changes. It is worth remembering that on the new boundaries the Tories would gain around 10 seats.
Starmer has three advantages Cameron didn't have though: 1) Scotland - the SCONS did abysmally and one only won seat north of the border. By contrast, Labour should win at least a dozen seats (the SNP need a lead of around 10% for Labour to win fewer) and (per the YouGOV MRP and Panelbase poll) actually seem to have a shot at being the largest party. Humsa isn't very good and the SNP's woes (what with the police investigation and Humsa being forced by the Greens to take the GRR bill to the UK Supreme Court) seem likely to continue for a while yet. 2) No third party rival in England or Wales - unlike 2015, in 2010 Cameron failed to win back many of the seats the Tories lost to the Lib Dems in the 1990s. By contrast, the only party Labour needs to win seats from south of the border are the Tories. And bar a couple of exceptions (Wimbledon? Sheffield Hallam?), there are no seats where Labour are going to be in a fight with the Liberal Democrats. As for Farage, contrary to the silly claims Reform could hold the balance of power if he came back, any return to the frontline politics for him will damage the Tories more than it does Labour. 3) Tactical voting - the local elections suggest there will be a lot of anti-Tory tactical voting at the next election. This will likely give Labour at least another 10-15 seats. Landslide? Perhaps not. But at the moment it looks likely Starmer will have a healthy working majority.
And it looked the same until certainly October 2009 for Cameron.
I would not count any chickens yet if I were Starmer.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Who has been offered a 1% pay increase by the govt ?
Kemi Badenoch is favourite to be next Tory leader but she might prefer to wait until after the next election. Otherwise it would likely be a very brief leadership.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Who has been offered a 1% pay increase by the govt ?
Certainly not those on the triple-lock.
Can't find any 1% links from Google right now, but I do recall it coming up, but the DFE wanted to give a 3% pay rise to teachers this year.
3% for teachers is a real terms pay cut of 8%, almost decimating in real terms the pay for teachers, but the triple-lock keeps those who are not working at a completely different rate.
Perhaps you can find any examples where those who are working for a living are being offered significantly more than those who are not?
Talking of insurance, got my car renewal quote through today from Aviva. Up from £650 to £2,200. No thanks.
Blimey. Got mine for £250 this year.
Mine was also about £250, and about the same as last year - esure Flex, from esure. Rather funnily, their tech isn't yet set up to do renewals, so they had to apologetically beg me to find them again on price comparison website to re-insure with them. I did, and they were still the cheapest.
"NHS's ‘healthy weight’ calculator made people fatter Errors in online service meant overweight people were told to eat more calories per day than they should have"
The NHS “healthy weight” calculator has been wrongly advising overweight people to eat hundreds of excess calories per day. The scale of the blunders was such that a typical dieter could have put on nearly two and a half stone a year by following the instructions given to them by the health service. The errors meant that an overweight man trying to lose weight could be advised to eat almost 300 excess calories per day, with around 240 extra calories allocated to women in the same category. Those following the advice could have consumed 2,086 calories extra per week – equivalent to more than four Big Mac burgers.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
...snip ...
This goes the other way too. When being prepared to pay high costs for high quality, you need good management to ensure you get the high quality you are paying for.
This applied in the last company I worked for. The boss wanted a high quality new office, the contractors were always "trying it on" by using cheaper products that the company was paying for. Kept a couple of employees busy trying to check everything was done properly.
The Kuwait Investment Authority and other assorted bods might not be very happy.
Oh dear. How sad. Nevermind. 🎻
Other investors include the BT pension scheme, the Canadian funds Omers and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, the China Investment Corporation and the UK lecturers’ pension fund USS. Last summer they agreed to pump an extra £500m of equity into the business, with a possible £1bn to follow, to shore up the company’s finances...
The real villains (Macquarie) are long since departed.
It's unlikely that there is a £14bn deficit in current financial terms, and the weakness of the business is to a large extent the responsibility of previous owners, so your idea that bondholders "should lose everything" would be seen as confiscatory. Which, given the UK government's continuing need to finance its borrowings on international markets, might be thought less than prudent.
They will be contemplating serious losses, though.
The Kuwait Investment Authority and other assorted bods might not be very happy.
Oh dear. How sad. Nevermind. 🎻
Other investors include the BT pension scheme, the Canadian funds Omers and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, the China Investment Corporation and the UK lecturers’ pension fund USS. Last summer they agreed to pump an extra £500m of equity into the business, with a possible £1bn to follow, to shore up the company’s finances...
The real villains (Macquarie) are long since departed.
It's unlikely that there is a £14bn deficit in current financial terms, and the weakness of the business is to a large extent the responsibility of previous owners, so your idea that bondholders "should lose everything" would be seen as confiscatory. Which, given the UK government's continuing need to finance its borrowings on international markets, might be thought less than prudent.
They will be contemplating serious losses, though.
Bondholders should have done their due diligence before they invested.
If they've given money to a failed business, then whether that failed businesses 'villains' have departed already or not is neither here nor there, it was their choice to do so.
People losing money through private investments failing is not confiscatory, its the free market. The taxpayer has no onus or obligation to bail out those who fail to do due diligence.
Not showing or mentioning the ecofascists, total media blackout, is the way to deal with them.
Yes, don't even mention the name of their "cause".
Sports presenters learnt decades ago this was the way you need to handle streakers who were doing it just for attention for themselves. Same principle here.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
...snip ...
This goes the other way too. When being prepared to pay high costs for high quality, you need good management to ensure you get the high quality you are paying for.
This applied in the last company I worked for. The boss wanted a high quality new office, the contractors were always "trying it on" by using cheaper products that the company was paying for. Kept a couple of employees busy trying to check everything was done properly.
I used to work for a large hotel company. The procurement team had a constant battle with contractors trying to reduce quality when we’d paid for the good stuff. Yes, we can tell the difference between marble and ceramic tiles, or between wood panels and cheap ply veneer!
Three new Spanish polls this morning. All show the right wing lead narrowing slightly. However all give clear potential majority for the PP/VOX combo. No sign yet that the socialists are changing the game
What is becoming clear is that if there is a PP/Vox majority there will be a PP/Vox coalition. PSOE will be delighted with events in Valencia and Extremadura. Feijoo will spend the next few weeks dodging questions about this, while Sanchez is already moving very aggressively onto the front foot. I suspect that it is too late, that dislike of Sanchez is currently too ingrained in too many, but what happens after the GE will be fascinating. I do not see how a PP/Vox government ends well.
Few governments operating in a world post COVID and amidst the Ukraine debacle have it easy. That Spain seeks a respite from several years of a centre/extreme left Coalition for the opposite is hardly surprising. In fact this appears to be happening here in spite of a markedly less harsh economic downturn, which says something about how wrongly Sanchez has judged the national mood.
Yep, I think Sanchez badly misjudged the public mood. Anti-Sanchismo will almost certainly lead to a PP/Vox coalition. The question is, then what? Clearly, the Catalan and Basque separatists are itching for a change of government and a fight that Vox, at least, is also seeking. On top of that, there are the major environmental challenges posed by extended drought and higher temperatures which Vox denies are a problem; and the fact that both Vox and PP opposed the current government's popular labour reforms and moves to reduce the cost of housing. What will they do there? From a UK perspective, a PP/Vox approach to Gibraltar should be fun.
Haha - and a Starmer response if he wins. PP propose less tax for those earning less tha 40k. That would be welcome.
I think the major PP problem is that it is only very recently that it felt it might win the election. It is entirely unprepared for government with Vox. My guess is that a second GE is going to follow quite soon after this one. I suspect that is what Sanchez thinks too.
The current poll leads have existed for a year or so. If Box don't play ball another GE is possible. No obvious reason why the Sanchez would win it. Sounds very much like pissing in the wind.
Having a small poll lead is not the same thing as thinking you will win. The regional and local elections only happened a month ago. They were the gamechanger. After all, it is only 14 months ago that PP was in turmoil and was forced to change leader. I think Sanchez believes PP is wholly unprepared for government, especially one that involves working closely with Vox. That's why he brought the elections forward. It gave PP far less time to develop a strategy and programme for power. Obviously, it's a gamble - but a second election that is not about anti-Sanchismo would suit PSOE.
You forget the landslide here in Andalucía last year where PP gained an absolute majority after 40 odd years of PSOE dominance. Very difficult for Sanchez to win while that earthquake holds.
I don't think Sanchez will win. But PSOE lost Andalusia well before last year.
Not to anything like an absolute majority - indeed PSOE were well clear as largest party.
Just back after four weeks in the Greek islands, a few observations:
- much busier than 2022 - passport queues non-existent on arriving and leaving despite need for stamps - cost of eating out slightly higher than 2022 but portion size and quality noticeably affected - weather unusually unsettled, with rain some days and cool wind most days, poorer weather than back home in Yorkshire Dales - Americans by far the highest proportion of tourist, Chinese tourists returning, no Russians - designer boutiques and cocktail bars driving out traditional businesses even on less popular islands
Overall, the traditional Greek Island experience is getting harder to find.
We noticed much higher prices on our French cycle ride than our previous one for accommodation and food.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
It's 50% more than the benefit rise! And I don't support that for all pensioners.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
It's 50% more than the benefit rise! And I don't support that for all pensioners.
50% is a much smaller gap then, isn't it?
Using that logic the Government is offering pensioners 200% to 300% more than those working for a living right now.
Just back after four weeks in the Greek islands, a few observations:
- much busier than 2022 - passport queues non-existent on arriving and leaving despite need for stamps - cost of eating out slightly higher than 2022 but portion size and quality noticeably affected - weather unusually unsettled, with rain some days and cool wind most days, poorer weather than back home in Yorkshire Dales - Americans by far the highest proportion of tourist, Chinese tourists returning, no Russians - designer boutiques and cocktail bars driving out traditional businesses even on less popular islands
Overall, the traditional Greek Island experience is getting harder to find.
Never been to Greece. I think we (my parents) considered going there in the 80s but it didn't happen.
Written from a US perspective but there may be parallels here.
Useful link, thank you.
(continued...) Yes, it's from a US perspective (liberal vas conservative), yes it's used with reference to gender dysphoria (which is why it's on Unherd: if it was autism or depression would they have published it?), and I'm not sure all of it works (analysis by age group sets my teeth on edge and is subject to problems over time: it should be cohort analysis instead), but the central point - the pathologisation of behavior and the belief that the surgical/medical paradigm can be used for cases when it isn't - seems valid.
Comments
There still a few islands where the older experience can be found, but not as many. There's also many unexplored parts of the mainland. It's the same for Athens, as I've said many times ; go before a city that in some areas now has the balance of spontaneity and affluence of 1990's London, turns into another globocity.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
Show me where he wrote them down...
Two other things worth noting is that prices in the middle of nowhere in France are so much lower than in towns. Much much more so than in the UK and we always assume everyone can speak English (or at least some) which again is true in towns, but in the rural areas we found most people spoke none at all. Translate on the phone was very useful and also made communicating great fun.
Think about the meaning of that phrase.
The more broadly conservative you are, the more your objection is not to any particular change proposed, but to the proposal of change itself. Five leaders since 2016 will be seen by political writers, PBers etc as interesting and full of stuff to talk about. Millions of people, rightly, see it as a sign of being useless, unprincipled short term opportunists.
If David Cameron had been decently honourable ("the UK would flourish if it votes to leave the EU, the decision is your's") he would still be PM and the UK and Tory party would be in a rather different place.
A house is a house, is a house.
Whether a house is social housing, or private, either way its a home and there's no need for it to be one class or the other.
The problem is people standing in the way of getting anything built at all.
As I've said repeatedly, the single city of Tokyo (population less than 14 million) has been having more houses built than the entire country of England put together.
That's not because Tokyo is going gangbusters on social housing. Its because land zoned for residential can be built on without asking your neighbours or politicians for permission first, and its also because land is taxed so nobody wants to hold onto land that is zoned for residential without it actually having a home or similar on it.
Tories seem to be in utter denial. On Teesside the grift is off the scale, but Ben Nothing To See Houchen and Simon That's Defamation Clarke think they are right and everyone else is wrong. Especially when the things they lied about having already happened then start to happen. Meanwhile Middlesbrough and surrounding towns slide further into visible decline, squalour and hopelessness, whilst the Tories keep insisting how Brilliant everything is and don't let Labour stop (our grifting).
There's also no rush for the government to buy out of administration if it means a bad deal taking into account the net debt. Bond holders should also suffer losses if there's no private market solution that values it positively.
If social housing could be built on top of other housing, then nothing wrong with that in my eyes. My preferred solution if going down that path would be to have Councils able to build but keeping Right to Buy on any of those new homes, and having the proceeds from any sales reinvested to build new homes again.
However if planning were seriously reformed, and the oligopoly of housing developers broken up by modernising to zoning instead of planning, then there would be no need for that.
Either way a solution is needed, and since the Tories won't go with deregulation then the state building again is likely to be the outcome that happens since that's what Labour will prefer.
- where it *has* increased, there are multiple builders competing against each other. See the mad scramble to build flats in London. Any piece of land is built on - between railways tracks and motorways, even.
-
- where it hasn't - either a local monopoly or small oligopoly (2 or 3) of the big builders.
Adam Smith explained, at some length, the problems with monopolies.
And with schools, you have the additional problem that, unless they really stuff up, academies are basically accountable to themselves.
Come on Jimmy!
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Bond holders equally should be told that we won't be billing out water companies due to the way shareholders have abused loans to pay dividends rather than invest.
We had that with a commercial property a few years ago. The roof got damaged in a storm, and so we put in a claim, the insurance had not long been renewed but the firm sent out a surveyor who then put in an absurdly huge rebuild value for the property. The insurers then said our property was underinsured (despite having just renewed it with them), and so they only repaid 60% of what we paid out to have the roof repaired.
All you need is to own an "Eco Waste" company as part of your little stack of building related companies. You charge yourself a fortune to cart the rubble away.
The sale, by the "Eco Waste" company, of gravel, sand, topsoil and hardcore is noticed by nearly no-one outside the trade.
Whether a loan was used to pay dividends or invest is not really the issue, since its a private firm either way, the bond holders haven't done their due diligence if they were making loans to a firm that couldn't repay it either way.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
1) Scotland - the SCONS did abysmally and one only won seat north of the border. By contrast, Labour should win at least a dozen seats (the SNP need a lead of around 10% for Labour to win fewer) and (per the YouGOV MRP and Panelbase poll) actually seem to have a shot at being the largest party. Humsa isn't very good and the SNP's woes (what with the police investigation and Humsa being forced by the Greens to take the GRR bill to the UK Supreme Court) seem likely to continue for a while yet.
2) No third party rival in England or Wales - unlike 2015, in 2010 Cameron failed to win back many of the seats the Tories lost to the Lib Dems in the 1990s. By contrast, the only party Labour needs to win seats from south of the border are the Tories. And bar a couple of exceptions (Wimbledon? Sheffield Hallam?), there are no seats where Labour are going to be in a fight with the Liberal Democrats.
As for Farage, contrary to the silly claims Reform could hold the balance of power if he came back, any return to the frontline politics for him will damage the Tories more than it does Labour.
3) Tactical voting - the local elections suggest there will be a lot of anti-Tory tactical voting at the next election. This will likely give Labour at least another 10-15 seats.
Landslide? Perhaps not. But at the moment it looks likely Starmer will have a healthy working majority.
The Kuwait Investment Authority and other assorted bods might not be very happy.
https://twitter.com/coryprovost/status/1673894178680438785
34 years ago Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the NYTimes demanding the death penalty for the Central Park 5.
Now, as Trump is facing his own prison time, Yusef Salaam is on his way to be the NYC Councilmember for Harlem !
I would not count any chickens yet if I were Starmer.
In fairness, I don't think he is.
https://unherd.com/2023/06/is-liberal-society-making-us-ill/
Written from a US perspective but there may be parallels here.
Yes they did. And they’ll be playing each other for most of the summer!
Can't find any 1% links from Google right now, but I do recall it coming up, but the DFE wanted to give a 3% pay rise to teachers this year.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-recommends-affordable-3-teacher-pay-rise-for-2023/
3% for teachers is a real terms pay cut of 8%, almost decimating in real terms the pay for teachers, but the triple-lock keeps those who are not working at a completely different rate.
Perhaps you can find any examples where those who are working for a living are being offered significantly more than those who are not?
"NHS's ‘healthy weight’ calculator made people fatter
Errors in online service meant overweight people were told to eat more calories per day than they should have"
The NHS “healthy weight” calculator has been wrongly advising overweight people to eat hundreds of excess calories per day. The scale of the blunders was such that a typical dieter could have put on nearly two and a half stone a year by following the instructions given to them by the health service. The errors meant that an overweight man trying to lose weight could be advised to eat almost 300 excess calories per day, with around 240 extra calories allocated to women in the same category. Those following the advice could have consumed 2,086 calories extra per week – equivalent to more than four Big Mac burgers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/24/nhs-healthy-weight-bmi-calculator-made-people-fatter/
This applied in the last company I worked for. The boss wanted a high quality new office, the contractors were always "trying it on" by using cheaper products that the company was paying for. Kept a couple of employees busy trying to check everything was done properly.
The real villains (Macquarie) are long since departed.
It's unlikely that there is a £14bn deficit in current financial terms, and the weakness of the business is to a large extent the responsibility of previous owners, so your idea that bondholders "should lose everything" would be seen as confiscatory. Which, given the UK government's continuing need to finance its borrowings on international markets, might be thought less than prudent.
They will be contemplating serious losses, though.
What exactly do they expect to gain from this?
If they've given money to a failed business, then whether that failed businesses 'villains' have departed already or not is neither here nor there, it was their choice to do so.
People losing money through private investments failing is not confiscatory, its the free market. The taxpayer has no onus or obligation to bail out those who fail to do due diligence.
Thank Allah for Johnny Bairstow. He saved the test from being abandoned.
Footage below.
https://twitter.com/arifahmeditv/status/1673996937106735104?s=46
Sky refused to show the protest and just showed Bairstow removing the guy with no visibility of what the guy was wearing or any protest info.
That's exactly how you need to deal with these twats.
If they get no publicity there is no incentive to do it.
Sports presenters learnt decades ago this was the way you need to handle streakers who were doing it just for attention for themselves. Same principle here.
Sky are smarter than the BBC it seems. 🤦♂️
Using that logic the Government is offering pensioners 200% to 300% more than those working for a living right now.
Hence the "Alan's Snackbar" joke.