Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
No Overall Majority remains value, as it has been for ages. As between Lab getting +325 seats or less than 326 seats, at the moment it's about even money in reality.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/21/debate-advice-desantis-2024-00112063 ...In looking at the advice for DeSantis you can see some “guidance” that highlights fundamental dilemmas for the governor. If “hammering” Ramaswamy suggests that DeSantis’ team fears the strength of the entrepreneur, it implies an underlying weakness. A posture of looking over one’s shoulder at a dark horse does not suggest a strong contender for the nomination. And “defending Trump … in response to a Christie attack” recalls the doomed strategy of Trump’s 2016 primary foes: Cozy up to Trump on the hopes you will inherit his followers when his campaign collapses. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.
Finally there’s one invaluable debate asset that no consultant or adviser can supply, and that’s confidence in your ability to stand on your feet and engage your opponents (and your journalist-moderator). More than any clever sound bite or talking point, that ability is the surest way to dominate a debate. It’s why some consultants, after providing mountains of advice, end by telling a candidate to “be yourself.”
In the case of Ron DeSantis, that may be the biggest challenge of all.
I think Mike may be overplaying this somewhat. The Labour lead looks pretty stable across most pollsters. In yesterday’s YouGov it was unchanged on 19 points, with Starmer increasing his best PM lead. It was two points at the start of August, it’s now eight points. Sunday’s Opinium had the Labour lead up one. yesterday’s R&W did have the headline number down to 15 from 20, but it is a much bumpier pollster. The same poll had Starmer with a 30 point approval lead over Sunak. Up on the previous week.
Overall, there has been a very slight narrowing in the average Labour lead, but at this stage it looks like noise rather than anything significant. I have not detected any closing of the Sunak/Starmer gap, though. But maybe I have missed some of that polling.
I think the outcome of GE2024 is not so much dependent on the Labour lead fluctuating a few points either way, as on vote efficiency.
Here's the table from 2015 to 2019:
Votes per seat won in 2019 was 38k for the Conservatives, 51k for Labour, 336k for the LibDems.
During the Blair period, Labour's efficiency was significantly greater than the Tories'. We can expect this to be the case in GE2024.
But we also have the wildcard of the LibDems' efficiency. If that starts heading down towards 150k, as seems plausible, then the Conservatives are in real trouble.
Much of this depends on people's understanding of tactical voting. My gut feeling is that the LD vote is going to jump en masse to Labour in Con/Lab battles outside the South, but I have no idea whether Lab voters in the Blue Wall™ are going to return the favour and go LD.
If you look at 1997-2010, you see a lot of Labour supporters giving their votes to the LibDems. These were the glory years of the anti-Tory party. It looks to me like it is currently enjoying a revival - the May locals and the by-elections seem to strongly suggest that, Uxbridge notwithstanding. That’s why I think looking at Lab+LD+Green and Tory+Reform in the polls, rather than individual vote shares, is so important.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
The issue is that various governments, since then, took the policy decision to inflate… the population.
While retaining policies designed to restrain/prevent infrastructure construction.
Im afraid so and its unlikely the politicians will admit to their short-sightedness.
Well, as we have seen here, the problem is that suggesting that immigration has costs and issues gets met with fear and rejection.
Any politician who says publicly that we need 8 million more properties because immigration has expanded the population will be branded a Fascist, Racist Destroyer of The Countryside.
I think Mike may be overplaying this somewhat. The Labour lead looks pretty stable across most pollsters. In yesterday’s YouGov it was unchanged on 19 points, with Starmer increasing his best PM lead. It was two points at the start of August, it’s now eight points. Sunday’s Opinium had the Labour lead up one. yesterday’s R&W did have the headline number down to 15 from 20, but it is a much bumpier pollster. The same poll had Starmer with a 30 point approval lead over Sunak. Up on the previous week.
Overall, there has been a very slight narrowing in the average Labour lead, but at this stage it looks like noise rather than anything significant. I have not detected any closing of the Sunak/Starmer gap, though. But maybe I have missed some of that polling.
I think the outcome of GE2024 is not so much dependent on the Labour lead fluctuating a few points either way, as on vote efficiency.
Here's the table from 2015 to 2019:
Votes per seat won in 2019 was 38k for the Conservatives, 51k for Labour, 336k for the LibDems.
During the Blair period, Labour's efficiency was significantly greater than the Tories'. We can expect this to be the case in GE2024.
But we also have the wildcard of the LibDems' efficiency. If that starts heading down towards 150k, as seems plausible, then the Conservatives are in real trouble.
Much of this depends on people's understanding of tactical voting. My gut feeling is that the LD vote is going to jump en masse to Labour in Con/Lab battles outside the South, but I have no idea whether Lab voters in the Blue Wall™ are going to return the favour and go LD.
Part of the story of 2019 was anti-Labour tactical voting, becuase by that point Corbyn was so unelectable. There's plenty of evidence that that has unwound.
By elections in the last year or so indicate that LibLab voters can be persuaded to do their duty; the unpleasantness of 2010-15 seems to have been forgiven. The question is whether Lib Dems can make this happen without the massive artillery of a by election campaign.
Both Sunak and his wife are lifelong vegetarians. Not all Hindus are, but many are. It is one reason that we do so well for vegetarian food in Leicester.
Not knocking the polling, but it would be helpful to understand how many "not voting" people there are in the sample, Sunak has a challenge to get the stay at home Tories off their backsides and theres also the "theyre all the same" cohort which could get motivated if any party had distinctive policies or leadership.
The Don't Knows are 2/3 female, and a demographic that is increasingly strong for Labour. I wouldn't rely on them to save Sunak's bacon substitute.
I think we are looking at 2019 in reverse, with the Tories on sub 200 seats, possibly significantly fewer.
I am no fan of the wooden, verbose Starmer but he is a master of setting up heffalump traps for the Tories. He thinks strategically, at least as far as elections go.
I think Labour will get most seats, but if they get a majority it will be a very small one. For some reason, we are utterly transfixed by the 1997 general election when most elections that see a change of government are much closer.
So dead set are the media of this country against the idea of a successful Labour government - the right wing press out of partisan bias, the left wing press out of nervousness and a fear of disillusionment - I've a feeling the next GE will be the last set of by-elections writ large. Anything short of Blair 1997 will be a little disappointing for Labour. Nevermind that in the run up everyone is going to be expecting Labour to underperform. When they do (against the supposed expectation of a Blair 1997 rerun) come day 2 of the new government the journalists will be starting to spot the writing on the wall.
Looking at the charts in the header it's pretty clear what has happened. The Tory vote share has flatlined but Labour has lost ground while the Lib Dems and Refuk have gained. Refuk by quite some considerable distance, as Brexiteers fall out of love with the post-Boris Tory party. The Lib Dem gains are not necessarily good news for the conservatives, depending on where they are. But will those Refukkers come back home? That's possibly the big question that will decide the size of any Labour majority. Do they sit on their hands, or hold their noses and vote Rishi? Likewise the recently lower but still squeezable Green vote to Labour.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Both Sunak and his wife are lifelong vegetarians. Not all Hindus are, but many are. It is one reason that we do so well for vegetarian food in Leicester.
The Times of India reports a friend saying "“Sunak doesn’t really eat much and can survive on just a Granny Smith apple and some cashew nuts.”
1. No one wins on the day by 20%+ unless the situation is truly exceptional, like 1931.
2. The right of centre vote in this country is well above 30%, even on current polling. But, Reform showed themselves to quite incapable of winning votes on the ground in recent by-elections.
3. Inflation has fallen below the rate of increase in wages, and that will remain the case up until the next election. Indeed, the gap between inflation and wage rises will widen.
4. The Conservative vote is depressed by the number of. people saying don't know/won't say.
5. A lot of people have done very well, over the past thirteen years.
6. Unlike the 1993-97 period, there have been some good results for the Conservatives against the run of play, in by-elections and local elections.
As opposed to that:
1. It's plainly time for a change.
2. The government is incompetent and some of its MP's are corrupt.
3. SKS doesn't frighten most of the electorate, unlike Corbyn.
All of which points to Labour enjoying the sort of lead the Conservatives had in 2010, at the next election, barring events.
I think that is broadly right, albeit you also have to posit some tactical voting against the government, which I don't think happened to a significant extent in 2010.
Not particularly optimistic, but what are the chances of Trump being assassinated in detention by a shadowy far right group, with or without connections to Russia, and the assassination being blamed on the Democrats, or Antifa to start a civil war?
Not knocking the polling, but it would be helpful to understand how many "not voting" people there are in the sample, Sunak has a challenge to get the stay at home Tories off their backsides and theres also the "theyre all the same" cohort which could get motivated if any party had distinctive policies or leadership.
The Don't Knows are 2/3 female, and a demographic that is increasingly strong for Labour. I wouldn't rely on them to save Sunak's bacon substitute.
I think we are looking at 2019 in reverse, with the Tories on sub 200 seats, possibly significantly fewer.
I am no fan of the wooden, verbose Starmer but he is a master of setting up heffalump traps for the Tories. He thinks strategically, at least as far as elections go.
Yougov yesterday has 26% of 2019 Conservative voters now don't know but just 13% of 2019 Labour voters don't know
Both Sunak and his wife are lifelong vegetarians. Not all Hindus are, but many are. It is one reason that we do so well for vegetarian food in Leicester.
The Times of India reports a friend saying "“Sunak doesn’t really eat much and can survive on just a Granny Smith apple and some cashew nuts.”
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
"inflation" is a shorthand used to mean consumer price inflation, not asset price inflation. Are you disputing that consumer price inflation was low, or that this led the BOE like other central banks to keep nominal and real interest rates lower than before, or that this led to asset price inflation? I'm not sure which part of my analysis (none of which is original to me or especially controversial) you are objecting to. I don't disagree that central banks should have targeted a broader measure of inflation, BTW. Consumer price inflation was low because of imported consumer goods from China and elsewhere. They should target a measure of inflation in the domestic economy, like the GDP deflator, which was signalling that rates were too low. This is actually what the theoretical arguments in favour of inflation targeting would suggest. Targeting asset prices themselves would be a mistake, for lots of reasons.
By defining inflation in terms of consumer goods in an environment in which consumer goods were becoming cheaper and more plentiful due to globalisation, it set up a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued to prevent the nominal prices of consumer goods from falling as they should have done, all things being equal.
It wasn't so much that houses went up in value, but that the value of the currency went down to chase the falling price of goods. It was all a grotesque con that has done more than anything to lead the us into the social and economic malaise we now face.
To distract myself from current medical treatment, I went in search of a long lost 400 yd piece of public footpath across a former recreation ground (roundabout and swings, football pitch long gone) on a 6km or so signposted walking / cycling route the way I used to walk to infant school a few years ago.
The path was barriered off a *long* time ago (unlawfully I think since the Disability Discrimination Act 1995), and as a result all that is left now in places is a 2ft wide muddy trail able to accommodate a fat labrador and its owner, who are about the only group that can practically use it. It used to be 2m of tarmac.
And I found it. Under a mat of overgrowth. Now to get the Council to remove the obstructions and maintain it - somehow, and on to the other 90% of the signposted route.
I think Mike may be overplaying this somewhat. The Labour lead looks pretty stable across most pollsters. In yesterday’s YouGov it was unchanged on 19 points, with Starmer increasing his best PM lead. It was two points at the start of August, it’s now eight points. Sunday’s Opinium had the Labour lead up one. yesterday’s R&W did have the headline number down to 15 from 20, but it is a much bumpier pollster. The same poll had Starmer with a 30 point approval lead over Sunak. Up on the previous week.
Overall, there has been a very slight narrowing in the average Labour lead, but at this stage it looks like noise rather than anything significant. I have not detected any closing of the Sunak/Starmer gap, though. But maybe I have missed some of that polling.
I think the outcome of GE2024 is not so much dependent on the Labour lead fluctuating a few points either way, as on vote efficiency.
Here's the table from 2015 to 2019:
Votes per seat won in 2019 was 38k for the Conservatives, 51k for Labour, 336k for the LibDems.
During the Blair period, Labour's efficiency was significantly greater than the Tories'. We can expect this to be the case in GE2024.
But we also have the wildcard of the LibDems' efficiency. If that starts heading down towards 150k, as seems plausible, then the Conservatives are in real trouble.
Much of this depends on people's understanding of tactical voting. My gut feeling is that the LD vote is going to jump en masse to Labour in Con/Lab battles outside the South, but I have no idea whether Lab voters in the Blue Wall™ are going to return the favour and go LD.
If you look at 1997-2010, you see a lot of Labour supporters giving their votes to the LibDems. These were the glory years of the anti-Tory party. It looks to me like it is currently enjoying a revival - the May locals and the by-elections seem to strongly suggest that, Uxbridge notwithstanding. That’s why I think looking at Lab+LD+Green and Tory+Reform in the polls, rather than individual vote shares, is so important.
A variation on that is probably to adjust for likely wasted votes. Wasted Green and Refuk being people who never return home to Labour / Tory. Wasted Lab/Lib being inefficient non-tactical LibLab voting. Could give us quite a nice predictive algorithm.
I would say Green will land at 3%. They've been heading slowly downwards, always over-perform in locals and underperform in GEs, and they don't have Caroline Lucas as a visible sitting MP defending a seat this time. But they won't vanish. We can probably add all the rest to Labour, as a rough guess.
Refuk will collapse, down to 2%. But some of those will not vote. So let's say for Refuk, like Green, all but 3% return Tory. That takes us back to pre-Rishi levels which feels about right.
Lib Dem: let's assume much greater efficiency due to tactical voting and organic changes (Lib Dems appealing more in Tory South and SW). So I would say roughly 6% of their their 10-14% recent range will fall in the wrong places and vice versa Lab votes in LD targets. This is the trickiest one to factor in.
That then gives us an adjusted LLG vs RefCon figure. Lab + (LD-6) + (G-3) vs Con + (Ref-3)
or, if we want to plug numbers into a UNS calculator we keep Lib Dem separate, i.e. Lab + (G-3) vs Con + (Ref-3) vs LD (unadjusted).
Then we can do our separate calculations about Scotland, which is surely the hardest to predict because of so many marginals.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Indeed. But the potential for councils to acquire building land way below the 'market' price gives them a genuine opportunity -and the wherewithal - to rebuild council housing stock on their own account.
Whether that it how the policy works out remains to be seen.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
To be fair, a couple of the gags did make me smile. But the winning joke was feeble. I think it would have worked better as: "My new boyfriend works in a zoo. I'm in it for the long term. He's a keeper."
Or, retaining more of the original joke, 'I left my boyfriend, because he works in a zoo. Turns out he was spending lots of time with cheetahs.'
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Indeed. But the potential for councils to acquire building land way below the 'market' price gives them a genuine opportunity -and the wherewithal - to rebuild council housing stock on their own account.
Whether that it how the policy works out remains to be seen.
Or indeed build on land they already own, e.g. when schools are replaced by new buildings on other sites. Though the tendency to build on playing fields is to be deplored. One of my few NIMBY acts was to complain about that hitting a local primary school (not near enough to me to affect me personally).
Slightly odd feeling of being out of step time wise BTW to read this discussion when council house building has been a thing in Scotland again for quite a while, as DavidL and I have noted before.
Not particularly optimistic, but what are the chances of Trump being assassinated in detention by a shadowy far right group, with or without connections to Russia, and the assassination being blamed on the Democrats, or Antifa to start a civil war?
Basically zero. Firstly he's not going to be detained, at least until later when he's repeatedly breached his bail conditions. Secondly, if there's one way to make the job of the Secret Service really easy, it's to lock up the guy they have to protect so he doesn't keep moving around all the time.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
True in the US too.
Central bankers missed the fact that globalisation was the reason CPI was low, and therefore allowed low interest rates to persist for too long, which meant lots of money flowed into housing pushing prices higher.
Of course, this should have spurred housebuilding, but planning constraints limited this somewhat. (Also, if we'd imported more brickies and fewer baristas, that might have helped.)
Not particularly optimistic, but what are the chances of Trump being assassinated in detention by a shadowy far right group, with or without connections to Russia, and the assassination being blamed on the Democrats, or Antifa to start a civil war?
Basically zero. Firstly he's not going to be detained, at least until later when he's repeatedly breached his bail conditions. Secondly, if there's one way to make the job of the Secret Service really easy, it's to lock up the guy they have to protect so he doesn't keep moving around all the time.
They'd have to keep him in solitary, surely?
And in any case, that would immediately cut off his access to whatever social media platform he's using today...
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
"inflation" is a shorthand used to mean consumer price inflation, not asset price inflation. Are you disputing that consumer price inflation was low, or that this led the BOE like other central banks to keep nominal and real interest rates lower than before, or that this led to asset price inflation? I'm not sure which part of my analysis (none of which is original to me or especially controversial) you are objecting to. I don't disagree that central banks should have targeted a broader measure of inflation, BTW. Consumer price inflation was low because of imported consumer goods from China and elsewhere. They should target a measure of inflation in the domestic economy, like the GDP deflator, which was signalling that rates were too low. This is actually what the theoretical arguments in favour of inflation targeting would suggest. Targeting asset prices themselves would be a mistake, for lots of reasons.
By defining inflation in terms of consumer goods in an environment in which consumer goods were becoming cheaper and more plentiful due to globalisation, it set up a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued to prevent the nominal prices of consumer goods from falling as they should have done, all things being equal.
It wasn't so much that houses went up in value, but that the value of the currency went down to chase the falling price of goods. It was all a grotesque con that has done more than anything to lead the us into the social and economic malaise we now face.
"a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued"
Against what was the pound being consistently devalued?
For that matter, what other developed world country's currency was being consistently devalued?
Indeed, I'd argue the lack of China currency appreciation (or pound/dollar/Euro depreciation relative to it) was a major part of the problem.
On topic, the left / right split during August has fallen into the following ranges:
Con+RefUK: 30-36 Lab+LD+Grn: 59-64
That's still a huge lead for the left, and leaves plenty of scope for tactical voting to amplify Labour's results. The Red&Wilt result is fairly central in that range: 34-61.
It was always to be expected that leads of 20+ would not be sustained. No party has had such a large lead at a general election since the highly exceptional 1931 contest. All other such periods of polling dominance have declined as the election approached. On the other hand, all other such periods were followed by an election where the party demonstrating that dominance won (even after an almighty car-crash of a campaign in 2017).
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
Researchers find 20,000-year-old refugium for orcas in the northern Pacific
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-year-old-refugium-orcas-northern-pacific.html ... In a recent paper published in Marine Mammal Science, she and colleagues explore the complex interaction between orca culture and post-glacial history of their colonization of the North Pacific, showing that the orca pods currently living near Nemuro Strait in northern Japan are descendants of orcas that settled there during the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago. The location was chosen as a refugium by distant ancestors, and their descendants have lived there ever since.
"Orcas are conservative and tradition-bound creatures who do not move or change their traditions unless there is a very good reason for it. We see that in this population," says Filatova.
This is the second time she has found an orca refugium from the Ice Age. The first one is near the Aleutian Islands, some 2500 km away. The pods there are just as conservative and tradition-bound as their Japanese conspecifics, and are also descendants of Ice Age ancestors who found refuge in ice-free waters.
"When the ice began to retreat again, and orcas and other whales could swim to new ice-free areas, some of them did not follow. They stayed in their [refugia], and they are still living there," says Filatova...
Not particularly optimistic, but what are the chances of Trump being assassinated in detention by a shadowy far right group, with or without connections to Russia, and the assassination being blamed on the Democrats, or Antifa to start a civil war?
Basically zero. Firstly he's not going to be detained, at least until later when he's repeatedly breached his bail conditions. Secondly, if there's one way to make the job of the Secret Service really easy, it's to lock up the guy they have to protect so he doesn't keep moving around all the time.
His (and his proxies') current & previous activities in attacking witnesses, counsel, prosecution and judiciary. and telling them publicly what they should do, seem afaics to breach conditions set in Georgia. Will he desist?
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
"inflation" is a shorthand used to mean consumer price inflation, not asset price inflation. Are you disputing that consumer price inflation was low, or that this led the BOE like other central banks to keep nominal and real interest rates lower than before, or that this led to asset price inflation? I'm not sure which part of my analysis (none of which is original to me or especially controversial) you are objecting to. I don't disagree that central banks should have targeted a broader measure of inflation, BTW. Consumer price inflation was low because of imported consumer goods from China and elsewhere. They should target a measure of inflation in the domestic economy, like the GDP deflator, which was signalling that rates were too low. This is actually what the theoretical arguments in favour of inflation targeting would suggest. Targeting asset prices themselves would be a mistake, for lots of reasons.
By defining inflation in terms of consumer goods in an environment in which consumer goods were becoming cheaper and more plentiful due to globalisation, it set up a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued to prevent the nominal prices of consumer goods from falling as they should have done, all things being equal.
It wasn't so much that houses went up in value, but that the value of the currency went down to chase the falling price of goods. It was all a grotesque con that has done more than anything to lead the us into the social and economic malaise we now face.
"a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued"
Against what was the pound being consistently devalued?
For that matter, what other developed world country's currency was being consistently devalued?
Indeed, I'd argue the lack of China currency appreciation (or pound/dollar/Euro depreciation relative to it) was a major part of the problem.
The most tangible sign that the currency's value was depreciating was house price inflation itself.
Yes, it was a combined failure of western monetary policy, but that doesn't excuse it.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Labour's opinion poll share has declined a bit, simply because there's a significant minority on the left disillusioned with some of Starmer's pronouncements that scale back any genuinely left-wing policies. So, some previous Labour supporters may have moved to the Lib Dem, Green or DK columns.
Come the GE, I'd expect Starmer to offer just enough of a whiff of socialism, undetectable to the right-wing press, to tempt most of the left sliders back.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
Labour has led consistently in double-figures for almost 11 months now. That's literally consistently - the last sub-Lab+10 lead was 26 Sept 2022. No party has been so dominant for so long since pre-Iraq Blair.
It's also over 20 months since a Tory lead, since when a lot of water has flowed under the bridge to seriously tarnish the Tory brand.
And it's notable how easy it is to get into a new comfort zone, with Mike here talking about a Labour lead of "just 15%". Remember that between 2002-22, Labour never recorded a lead of more than 16%. Corbyn never had one of more than 10% (and that only because the Tories were collapsing faster than Labour in early 2019); Sunak has never faced a Lab lead of less than 10%.
Labour may not be loved or trusted like it was by many in 1997 (it's doubtful that any party would be again, and that may be no bad thing - though cynicism can easily go too far the other way), but it'll be tolerated enough. Until after the election, anyway.
To be fair, a couple of the gags did make me smile. But the winning joke was feeble. I think it would have worked better as: "My new boyfriend works in a zoo. I'm in it for the long term. He's a keeper."
Or, retaining more of the original joke, 'I left my boyfriend, because he works in a zoo. Turns out he was spending lots of time with cheetahs.'
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
"inflation" is a shorthand used to mean consumer price inflation, not asset price inflation. Are you disputing that consumer price inflation was low, or that this led the BOE like other central banks to keep nominal and real interest rates lower than before, or that this led to asset price inflation? I'm not sure which part of my analysis (none of which is original to me or especially controversial) you are objecting to. I don't disagree that central banks should have targeted a broader measure of inflation, BTW. Consumer price inflation was low because of imported consumer goods from China and elsewhere. They should target a measure of inflation in the domestic economy, like the GDP deflator, which was signalling that rates were too low. This is actually what the theoretical arguments in favour of inflation targeting would suggest. Targeting asset prices themselves would be a mistake, for lots of reasons.
By defining inflation in terms of consumer goods in an environment in which consumer goods were becoming cheaper and more plentiful due to globalisation, it set up a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued to prevent the nominal prices of consumer goods from falling as they should have done, all things being equal.
It wasn't so much that houses went up in value, but that the value of the currency went down to chase the falling price of goods. It was all a grotesque con that has done more than anything to lead the us into the social and economic malaise we now face.
"a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued"
Against what was the pound being consistently devalued?
For that matter, what other developed world country's currency was being consistently devalued?
Indeed, I'd argue the lack of China currency appreciation (or pound/dollar/Euro depreciation relative to it) was a major part of the problem.
The most tangible sign that the currency's value was depreciating was house price inflation itself.
Yes, it was a combined failure of western monetary policy, but that doesn't excuse it.
OK: so you're arguing that the currency was devaluing relative to house prices?
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
To be fair, a couple of the gags did make me smile. But the winning joke was feeble. I think it would have worked better as: "My new boyfriend works in a zoo. I'm in it for the long term. He's a keeper."
Or, retaining more of the original joke, 'I left my boyfriend, because he works in a zoo. Turns out he was spending lots of time with cheetahs.'
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
Not particularly optimistic, but what are the chances of Trump being assassinated in detention by a shadowy far right group, with or without connections to Russia, and the assassination being blamed on the Democrats, or Antifa to start a civil war?
Basically zero. Firstly he's not going to be detained, at least until later when he's repeatedly breached his bail conditions. Secondly, if there's one way to make the job of the Secret Service really easy, it's to lock up the guy they have to protect so he doesn't keep moving around all the time.
Although we shouldn't rule out the possibility that he just dies of natural causes, occasioned by the stress of the situation on an obese late-70s body, and everyone assumes it's an assassination.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
I presume the Russians have just reset their minefields a bit further south.
Pro-independence support will be split at the bellwether Rutherglen by-election, as the Greens have confirmed they will stand a candidate likely to take votes from the SNP.
Despite being in government with their fellow Scottish nationalists, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater’s party will announce a candidate on Wednesday for Humza Yousaf’s first electoral test since becoming SNP leader.
Labour are favourites for the seat and will be buoyed by the Greens, the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition standing — all of which are pro-independence.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
I presume the Russians have just reset their minefields a bit further south.
Well, I don't think it's that easy to do that, and as the amount of land gets narrower, the harder that gets.
Labour has led consistently in double-figures for almost 11 months now. That's literally consistently - the last sub-Lab+10 lead was 26 Sept 2022. No party has been so dominant for so long since pre-Iraq Blair.
It's also over 20 months since a Tory lead, since when a lot of water has flowed under the bridge to seriously tarnish the Tory brand.
And it's notable how easy it is to get into a new comfort zone, with Mike here talking about a Labour lead of "just 15%". Remember that between 2002-22, Labour never recorded a lead of more than 16%. Corbyn never had one of more than 10% (and that only because the Tories were collapsing faster than Labour in early 2019); Sunak has never faced a Lab lead of less than 10%.
Labour may not be loved or trusted like it was by many in 1997 (it's doubtful that any party would be again, and that may be no bad thing - though cynicism can easily go too far the other way), but it'll be tolerated enough. Until after the election, anyway.
There are plenty of reasons to want a different story to "Labour comfortably ahead, Conservatives punchdrunk, solid Labour win pretty much nailed on". Conservatives hoping that it won't be that bad and they will still be relevant in 2025. Liberals hoping for a hung parliament giving them relevance. Anyone hoping for something interesting to happen in politics over the next year.
And it might happen, Events dear boy and all that. But it would have to be a damn big event, or the biggest choke in political history to change the path now.
Incidentally, the 2001 landslide was based on a mere 9 percent lead, 41-32. Different map, sure, but FPTP is a cruel thing when you're losing and everyone is against you.
Not particularly optimistic, but what are the chances of Trump being assassinated in detention by a shadowy far right group, with or without connections to Russia, and the assassination being blamed on the Democrats, or Antifa to start a civil war?
Basically zero. Firstly he's not going to be detained, at least until later when he's repeatedly breached his bail conditions. Secondly, if there's one way to make the job of the Secret Service really easy, it's to lock up the guy they have to protect so he doesn't keep moving around all the time.
Although we shouldn't rule out the possibility that he just dies of natural causes, occasioned by the stress of the situation on an obese late-70s body, and everyone assumes it's an assassination.
Sadly, that is far from unlikely, and probably leads to President Eric Trump.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
The state has a different success criterion; number built. Probably a steadier (but lower) work and income flow for builders and contractors.
I don't know if Starmer's plans will be enough, but they should help, and it's hard to see any current version of Conservatism doing the necessary.
The original reason that Adam Smith warned against monopolies was that price fixing is nearly inevitable. A sellers strike is part of that.
When the price of TVs fell year on year for decades, the TV makers didn't stop producing TVs. Why? Because the other guys would take the market.
The Victorians/Edwardians recognised this - hence limiting developers to one street (or even half a street) in a development. Which is why, when you go down a road of semis from that period, you see a run of identical houses, then a slightly different design for a further x houses...
If the council buys some land, I will bet they partner up with a big firm. Probably on profit share. Strangely, what will happen is... just the same.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Labour has led consistently in double-figures for almost 11 months now. That's literally consistently - the last sub-Lab+10 lead was 26 Sept 2022. No party has been so dominant for so long since pre-Iraq Blair.
It's also over 20 months since a Tory lead, since when a lot of water has flowed under the bridge to seriously tarnish the Tory brand.
And it's notable how easy it is to get into a new comfort zone, with Mike here talking about a Labour lead of "just 15%". Remember that between 2002-22, Labour never recorded a lead of more than 16%. Corbyn never had one of more than 10% (and that only because the Tories were collapsing faster than Labour in early 2019); Sunak has never faced a Lab lead of less than 10%.
Labour may not be loved or trusted like it was by many in 1997 (it's doubtful that any party would be again, and that may be no bad thing - though cynicism can easily go too far the other way), but it'll be tolerated enough. Until after the election, anyway.
There are plenty of reasons to want a different story to "Labour comfortably ahead, Conservatives punchdrunk, solid Labour win pretty much nailed on". Conservatives hoping that it won't be that bad and they will still be relevant in 2025. Liberals hoping for a hung parliament giving them relevance. Anyone hoping for something interesting to happen in politics over the next year.
And it might happen, Events dear boy and all that. But it would have to be a damn big event, or the biggest choke in political history to change the path now.
Incidentally, the 2001 landslide was based on a mere 9 percent lead, 41-32. Different map, sure, but FPTP is a cruel thing when you're losing and everyone is against you.
If there is substantial LD-Lab tactical voting, you can have a tiny lead and a decent majority (see 2005).
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
The state has a different success criterion; number built. Probably a steadier (but lower) work and income flow for builders and contractors.
I don't know if Starmer's plans will be enough, but they should help, and it's hard to see any current version of Conservatism doing the necessary.
The original reason that Adam Smith warned against monopolies was that price fixing is nearly inevitable. A sellers strike is part of that.
When the price of TVs fell year on year for decades, the TV makers didn't stop producing TVs. Why? Because the other guys would take the market.
The Victorians/Edwardians recognised this - hence limiting developers to one street (or even half a street) in a development. Which is why, when you go down a road of semis from that period, you see a run of identical houses, then a slightly different design for a further x houses...
If the council buys some land, I will bet they partner up with a big firm. Probably on profit share. Strangely, what will happen is... just the same.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices"
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
The state has a different success criterion; number built. Probably a steadier (but lower) work and income flow for builders and contractors.
I don't know if Starmer's plans will be enough, but they should help, and it's hard to see any current version of Conservatism doing the necessary.
Actually, I'm not sure that's true.
You want to recycle your capital as quickly as possible.
Let me give you an example.
In one world you can build a house for $1m and sell it for $1.5m, and you can do it every two years.
On the other, you can build a house for $1m, and sell it for $1.2m, but do it every 6 months.
In the first case, you make a 50% return on your investment; in the second, only 20%.
But here's the thing, you can make $0.2m four times in the same time it takes you to make $0.5m once.
Plus, if you have some of that competition stuff going on, your attempt to hold the market a market at 1.5m will be undermined by ruthless bar stewards selling below that, but still above their costs.
To be fair, a couple of the gags did make me smile. But the winning joke was feeble. I think it would have worked better as: "My new boyfriend works in a zoo. I'm in it for the long term. He's a keeper."
Or, retaining more of the original joke, 'I left my boyfriend, because he works in a zoo. Turns out he was spending lots of time with cheetahs.'
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
I think yours works better though.
You're 'aving a giraffe, surely?
Was he?
Dear me.
No wonder she left him.
...with a giraffe, if you stand on a stool, But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all...
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
Tokmak is a strategic rail junction. The Russians have no other railway into Crimea other than the Kerch Bridge.
Even if it can't be taken any time soon then having it within artillery range will at least cause problems. Everything will have to travel by the coast road.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
"inflation" is a shorthand used to mean consumer price inflation, not asset price inflation. Are you disputing that consumer price inflation was low, or that this led the BOE like other central banks to keep nominal and real interest rates lower than before, or that this led to asset price inflation? I'm not sure which part of my analysis (none of which is original to me or especially controversial) you are objecting to. I don't disagree that central banks should have targeted a broader measure of inflation, BTW. Consumer price inflation was low because of imported consumer goods from China and elsewhere. They should target a measure of inflation in the domestic economy, like the GDP deflator, which was signalling that rates were too low. This is actually what the theoretical arguments in favour of inflation targeting would suggest. Targeting asset prices themselves would be a mistake, for lots of reasons.
By defining inflation in terms of consumer goods in an environment in which consumer goods were becoming cheaper and more plentiful due to globalisation, it set up a race to the bottom in which the currency had to be consistently devalued to prevent the nominal prices of consumer goods from falling as they should have done, all things being equal.
It wasn't so much that houses went up in value, but that the value of the currency went down to chase the falling price of goods. It was all a grotesque con that has done more than anything to lead the us into the social and economic malaise we now face.
Not a grotesque con but a mistake. Not a huge one, in the sense that rates shouldn't have been that much higher and house prices would still have gone up because lower and less volatile inflation means lower real rates which means higher asset prices, that's just an inescapable fact of life. Plus, not building houses was dumb, I'd blame successive governments for that. Is that the source of our malaise? No. That comes from a collapse in productivity growth (precise cause uncertain), an ageing population (personally I think this is the main thing) and social media (which has spread discontent, misinformation and division).
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
The state has a different success criterion; number built. Probably a steadier (but lower) work and income flow for builders and contractors.
I don't know if Starmer's plans will be enough, but they should help, and it's hard to see any current version of Conservatism doing the necessary.
The original reason that Adam Smith warned against monopolies was that price fixing is nearly inevitable. A sellers strike is part of that.
When the price of TVs fell year on year for decades, the TV makers didn't stop producing TVs. Why? Because the other guys would take the market.
The Victorians/Edwardians recognised this - hence limiting developers to one street (or even half a street) in a development. Which is why, when you go down a road of semis from that period, you see a run of identical houses, then a slightly different design for a further x houses...
If the council buys some land, I will bet they partner up with a big firm. Probably on profit share. Strangely, what will happen is... just the same.
That's quite possible. It will be a big test of whether a Starmer government is any better than what we've had.
Or we could double the number of immigration officers at a back of envelope cost of £250m (5000 x £50k avg cost) and err, process the applications in a sensible time period? Radical stuff I know.
Or introduce a performance element to the pay structure for those doing the checking, and watch the rate of processing rise dramatically.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
I am curious. Since Right to Buy there has been a perilous lack of house building in many places. You want to point *only* at Labour's 13 years and not the decade and a half before and nearly the same after the Labour years?
Surely this is a prime example of shit policy set into concrete by multiple governments of multiple parties.
The key point about Right to Buy, which TSE ignores, is that central government snaffled the majority of the proceeds.
That was perhaps the single worst decision of the Thatcher years in relation to the country's political economy.
Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher, youre supposed to be blaming Brexit.
Labour spent buckets of cash between 97 and 2010 and elected not to put it in to housebuilding.
In 2010 the LDs had their chance and didnt push for housebuilding either in the coalition.
The Tories since 2016 have been a shitshow and havent built much either.
In the 30 years since Thatcher went all we have had is moany twats who havent done anything about the things theyre complaining about, but its so much more comforting to blame a dead woman than actually do something.
Thanks for that extended whinge.
Have you anything to say about the essential point ? The Conservative governments of the 80s funded much of their spending from asset sales. It was a neat political trick which their successors adopted - and over the course of decades very bad for the country's economy.
Unlike you appear to be, I am not particularly attached to any of our political parties.
Ive said it. It was a long time ago - half yours and mine life span to date,
Why pick on council receipts, you could focus on oil revenues or defence spending. The past is gone its only the future that matters and none of the political parties have any plan to address the lack of housing and infrastructure. Frankly that concerns me a lot more than the pre internet era.
Perhaps you could enlighten me on which party I support.
Labour actually has a housing plan. The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
The block, at the moment, for property construction is the local monopolies created by giving a single, big, firm the housing development for an area.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
Slightly different pattern of incentives, though.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
The state has a different success criterion; number built. Probably a steadier (but lower) work and income flow for builders and contractors.
I don't know if Starmer's plans will be enough, but they should help, and it's hard to see any current version of Conservatism doing the necessary.
The original reason that Adam Smith warned against monopolies was that price fixing is nearly inevitable. A sellers strike is part of that.
When the price of TVs fell year on year for decades, the TV makers didn't stop producing TVs. Why? Because the other guys would take the market.
The Victorians/Edwardians recognised this - hence limiting developers to one street (or even half a street) in a development. Which is why, when you go down a road of semis from that period, you see a run of identical houses, then a slightly different design for a further x houses...
If the council buys some land, I will bet they partner up with a big firm. Probably on profit share. Strangely, what will happen is... just the same.
Where we live is an exception - all the houses built in the same style - because the Haberdashers company built them to rent for income. A lot of the homes were only sold when they were already about 100 years old, I think. The uniformity of style does make for a very pleasant area, aesthetically speaking.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
Labour has led consistently in double-figures for almost 11 months now. That's literally consistently - the last sub-Lab+10 lead was 26 Sept 2022. No party has been so dominant for so long since pre-Iraq Blair.
It's also over 20 months since a Tory lead, since when a lot of water has flowed under the bridge to seriously tarnish the Tory brand.
And it's notable how easy it is to get into a new comfort zone, with Mike here talking about a Labour lead of "just 15%". Remember that between 2002-22, Labour never recorded a lead of more than 16%. Corbyn never had one of more than 10% (and that only because the Tories were collapsing faster than Labour in early 2019); Sunak has never faced a Lab lead of less than 10%.
Labour may not be loved or trusted like it was by many in 1997 (it's doubtful that any party would be again, and that may be no bad thing - though cynicism can easily go too far the other way), but it'll be tolerated enough. Until after the election, anyway.
There are plenty of reasons to want a different story to "Labour comfortably ahead, Conservatives punchdrunk, solid Labour win pretty much nailed on". Conservatives hoping that it won't be that bad and they will still be relevant in 2025. Liberals hoping for a hung parliament giving them relevance. Anyone hoping for something interesting to happen in politics over the next year.
And it might happen, Events dear boy and all that. But it would have to be a damn big event, or the biggest choke in political history to change the path now.
Incidentally, the 2001 landslide was based on a mere 9 percent lead, 41-32. Different map, sure, but FPTP is a cruel thing when you're losing and everyone is against you.
Also, the Tories messed up their targeting strategy in 2001 (though it helped a bit down the line). Seats with only a marginal Labour majority (like Shipley, where I was involved at the time), were left mostly to themselves in the belief that they should be strong enough to gain them back based off previous results, local activist base and local election results - all of which were strong enough arguments to look plausible but turned out to be wrong.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the effort went into the next tier down, which as it turned out were just too big a set of nuts to crack at that time. Consequently, virtually no seats in either category fell, though many of the majorities did.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
The capture of Robotyne then opens the way to Tokmak.
It's a long way to Tokmak, and even that is only about a third of the way to the Coast.
Tokmak is a strategic rail junction. The Russians have no other railway into Crimea other than the Kerch Bridge.
Even if it can't be taken any time soon then having it within artillery range will at least cause problems. Everything will have to travel by the coast road.
And Russian logistics is very rail heavy - they still have railway building troops. This is because they never developed the truck and pallet based systems that the NATO countries went for on a massive scale. Their truck usage is much shorter hauls from the rail heads, and is significantly slowed by loading and unloading.
Using the latest polls and EMA, if there were a Genral Election TODAY, Electoral Calculus shows a Labour majority of 230, and the LIbDems in third place on 40 seats.
To be fair, a couple of the gags did make me smile. But the winning joke was feeble. I think it would have worked better as: "My new boyfriend works in a zoo. I'm in it for the long term. He's a keeper."
Or, retaining more of the original joke, 'I left my boyfriend, because he works in a zoo. Turns out he was spending lots of time with cheetahs.'
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
I think yours works better though.
You're 'aving a giraffe, surely?
Was he?
Dear me.
No wonder she left him.
...with a giraffe, if you stand on a stool, But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all...
Still my favourite ever story involving hedgehogs or Scotland.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
And strangely*, there is a correlation of demand and houses building vs price.
*The least strange thing since strangeness was invented.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
To be fair, there is a long history of not counting house price inflation as *real inflation*.
IIRC one original reason was that inflation was the trigger for interest rates, and counting mortgage payments in the basket of purchases...
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
Prices have gone insane up North too, even if they're even further insane down South.
House price to income ratios used to be 3x in the North West, they're now 6.2x - that's more than doubled and is very insane.
To be fair, a couple of the gags did make me smile. But the winning joke was feeble. I think it would have worked better as: "My new boyfriend works in a zoo. I'm in it for the long term. He's a keeper."
Or, retaining more of the original joke, 'I left my boyfriend, because he works in a zoo. Turns out he was spending lots of time with cheetahs.'
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
I think yours works better though.
You're 'aving a giraffe, surely?
Was he?
Dear me.
No wonder she left him.
...with a giraffe, if you stand on a stool, But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all...
Still my favourite ever story involving hedgehogs or Scotland.
Maybe a native of the Western Isles, where they are (justifiably) not very popular https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-61784358 (lots of ground-nesting birds - there aren't many trees, nor many cliffs - with eggs that the little sonics find tasty)
Using the latest polls and EMA, if there were a Genral Election TODAY, Electoral Calculus shows a Labour majority of 230, and the LIbDems in third place on 40 seats.
But what is the trend?
The trend since the last GE (ignoring the Truss blip) for the next twelve months is as follows:
This gives Labour majority of 410 and the LibDems in second place.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Out of interest: Say for the sake of argument that instead of buying your house by borrowing money from the bank then paying a mortgage every year, your house was bought by the bank, and you paid them rent every year. Also imagine for the sake of argument that these transactions were for the exact same amounts. Would you still say the house wasn't an asset of the bank? Or would it be an asset if the bank owned it, but consumption if you owned it?
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
To be fair, there is a long history of not counting house price inflation as *real inflation*.
IIRC one original reason was that inflation was the trigger for interest rates, and counting mortgage payments in the basket of purchases...
Yes, there's multiple excuses that have been used, but housing is a cost and inflation needs to measure costs, even if its difficult to do.
Its funny the doublethink people are able to willingly engage in, insisting that housing is an asset so should be disregarded for inflation, and a necessary cost so disregarded for taxation. The truth is your own home always has been and always will be a necessary cost, much more than an asset, so should be included in the basket.
The fundamental problem behind a lot of scandals is that no-one really thinks about or pays regard to the human beings involved.
Today's example is the Criminal Cases Review Commission whose behaviour in the Andy Malkinson case is under question. So it announces an inquiry but does not have the wit or decency to consult Andy Malkinson about its terms or even to tell him of the announcement before it goes to the press.
A small example maybe but so telling of an attitude of mind which refuses to understand that these bodies and services are meant to be there to serve people.
What would it have cost them to inform him in advance? What would it have cost them to listen to his views?
Was there nobody in such an organisation to remember that this review is being undertaken because of the harm done to a human being? Was there nobody to think of how he might be feeling being treated once again as an irrelevance?
Using the latest polls and EMA, if there were a Genral Election TODAY, Electoral Calculus shows a Labour majority of 230, and the LIbDems in third place on 40 seats.
But what is the trend?
The trend since the last GE (ignoring the Truss blip) for the next twelve months is as follows:
This gives Labour majority of 410 and the LibDems in second place.
Well I don't want the Tories to win the next election but that last prediction is fanciful. All it really shows is the failure of such modelling.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
I think there's been an upward move in the last few years up where I am. I sold my previous property for 101.5k after buying it for 96.5k (With the most awful OO neighbours) in 2018. My current property has gone up about from 310 to over 400 since then. There's a slightly smaller, but better presented house OIRO 425 (Down from 450) down the road from me on the market at the moment.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
To be fair, there is a long history of not counting house price inflation as *real inflation*.
IIRC one original reason was that inflation was the trigger for interest rates, and counting mortgage payments in the basket of purchases...
Yes, there's multiple excuses that have been used, but housing is a cost and inflation needs to measure costs, even if its difficult to do.
Its funny the doublethink people are able to willingly engage in, insisting that housing is an asset so should be disregarded for inflation, and a necessary cost so disregarded for taxation. The truth is your own home always has been and always will be a necessary cost, much more than an asset, so should be included in the basket.
Right but usually places that account for this in their price index (can't remember what Britain does) do it by estimating how much rent you'd be paying yourself if you were renting, rather than counting the whole cost as if you were buying a really big loaf of bread.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
Prices have gone insane up North too, even if they're even further insane down South.
House price to income ratios used to be 3x in the North West, they're now 6.2x - that's more than doubled and is very insane.
A lot of the housing in the North West is being sold far below (re)build cost. This is not true of the south east.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Out of interest: Say for the sake of argument that instead of buying your house by borrowing money from the bank then paying a mortgage every year, your house was bought by the bank, and you paid them rent every year. Also imagine for the sake of argument that these transactions were for the exact same amounts. Would you still say the house wasn't an asset of the bank? Or would it be an asset if the bank owned it, but consumption if you owned it?
The latter, when you buy it that is your consumption.
Housing is a necessary, consumption, cost for those who are paying for it to have a roof over their heads. So if you're renting, or buying, its consumption.
For those who own to make a profit, whether it be a bank or landlord or pension scheme letting it out, then its an asset.
Just as a stock of cars owned by a leasing company or car manufacturer are assets for them, but if you buy a car for yourself or lease one for yourself then its consumption.
Using the latest polls and EMA, if there were a Genral Election TODAY, Electoral Calculus shows a Labour majority of 230, and the LIbDems in third place on 40 seats.
But what is the trend?
The trend since the last GE (ignoring the Truss blip) for the next twelve months is as follows:
This gives Labour majority of 410 and the LibDems in second place.
Well I don't want the Tories to win the next election but that last prediction is fanciful. All it really shows is the failure of such modelling.
Yes - I do fancy it, but I wouldn't bet on it!
It does illustrate the fragility of FPTP majorities. The SNP is a good current example, but the Tories could provide another example.
In the 1993 Canadian federal election the governing Progressive Conservative Party, which had been in office for nearly a decade, was reduced from an overall majority of 156 seats to only two with a 25% drop in their vote. Could the Tories suffer a 25% drop in their vote? Perhaps.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
Prices have gone insane up North too, even if they're even further insane down South.
House price to income ratios used to be 3x in the North West, they're now 6.2x - that's more than doubled and is very insane.
A lot of the housing in the North West is being sold far below (re)build cost. This is not true of the south east.
Nor is it true for the North West either.
Developers are building and selling properties all over the North West at prices which both fit the market and make the firm a profit. They're not doing so for charity.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
How would you do it? Simply add the house price to the CPI basket? With what kind of weight? Or would you go down the rental equivalence approach used in the US CPI and our own CPIH measure?
Using the latest polls and EMA, if there were a Genral Election TODAY, Electoral Calculus shows a Labour majority of 230, and the LIbDems in third place on 40 seats.
But what is the trend?
The trend since the last GE (ignoring the Truss blip) for the next twelve months is as follows:
This gives Labour majority of 410 and the LibDems in second place.
Well I don't want the Tories to win the next election but that last prediction is fanciful. All it really shows is the failure of such modelling.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Out of interest: Say for the sake of argument that instead of buying your house by borrowing money from the bank then paying a mortgage every year, your house was bought by the bank, and you paid them rent every year. Also imagine for the sake of argument that these transactions were for the exact same amounts. Would you still say the house wasn't an asset of the bank? Or would it be an asset if the bank owned it, but consumption if you owned it?
The latter, when you buy it that is your consumption.
Housing is a necessary, consumption, cost for those who are paying for it to have a roof over their heads. So if you're renting, or buying, its consumption.
For those who own to make a profit, whether it be a bank or landlord or pension scheme letting it out, then its an asset.
Just as a stock of cars owned by a leasing company or car manufacturer are assets for them, but if you buy a car for yourself or lease one for yourself then its consumption.
This seems a weird way to look at it because in the two cases in the example (bank owns house and rents to you, you own house and pay mortgage payments to the bank) the cost to you of living in the exact same house is exactly the same.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
How would you do it? Simply add the house price to the CPI basket? With what kind of weight? Or would you go down the rental equivalence approach used in the US CPI and our own CPIH measure?
Yes, I would have the house price itself in the CPI basket, just as car prices are in the CPI basket even though cars are often bought on finance. The cost of the good or service, in this case the car or house, should be in CPI, not the cost of the finance or mortgage/car loan.
As for what weight to give it, that should be weighted based on the proportion of expenditure that goes to pay for it typically.
Comments
The scheme to give local authorities the power to compulsorily acquire land without paying the premium for expected value with housing permission could make a very large difference, depending on how energetically it is implemented.
It's the first policy from them in a long time that I'm genuinely enthusiastic about.
Do you?
The Debate Advice DeSantis Should Ignore
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/21/debate-advice-desantis-2024-00112063
...In looking at the advice for DeSantis you can see some “guidance” that highlights fundamental dilemmas for the governor. If “hammering” Ramaswamy suggests that DeSantis’ team fears the strength of the entrepreneur, it implies an underlying weakness. A posture of looking over one’s shoulder at a dark horse does not suggest a strong contender for the nomination. And “defending Trump … in response to a Christie attack” recalls the doomed strategy of Trump’s 2016 primary foes: Cozy up to Trump on the hopes you will inherit his followers when his campaign collapses. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.
Finally there’s one invaluable debate asset that no consultant or adviser can supply, and that’s confidence in your ability to stand on your feet and engage your opponents (and your journalist-moderator). More than any clever sound bite or talking point, that ability is the surest way to dominate a debate. It’s why some consultants, after providing mountains of advice, end by telling a candidate to “be yourself.”
In the case of Ron DeSantis, that may be the biggest challenge of all.
Any politician who says publicly that we need 8 million more properties because immigration has expanded the population will be branded a Fascist, Racist Destroyer of The Countryside.
By elections in the last year or so indicate that LibLab voters can be persuaded to do their duty; the unpleasantness of 2010-15 seems to have been forgiven. The question is whether Lib Dems can make this happen without the massive artillery of a by election campaign.
Looking at the charts in the header it's pretty clear what has happened. The Tory vote share has flatlined but Labour has lost ground while the Lib Dems and Refuk have gained. Refuk by quite some considerable distance, as Brexiteers fall out of love with the post-Boris Tory party. The Lib Dem gains are not necessarily good news for the conservatives, depending on where they are. But will those Refukkers come back home? That's possibly the big question that will decide the size of any Labour majority. Do they sit on their hands, or hold their noses and vote Rishi? Likewise the recently lower but still squeezable Green vote to Labour.
This suits many of the players. The politicians can triangulate - lots of planning permissions given out, but the rate of building is much lower. The NIMBYs get slower building. Those worried about prices are kept happy. The house building firms get a steady flow of work. As do their sub contractors and workers. The shareholders of the big firms see house prices as stable - making their bet a safe one.
Unless the pattern of monopoly/duopoly development is dealt with, more land with planning permission won’t change things.
1) Silly season polling
2) Labour is close to their maximum vote
3) @MoonRabbit ’ing the poll aggregation data is a fools errand
What I see is - not much evidence of change
That makes a Labour majority more likely.
"Voting Intention: Con 26%, Lab 45% (17-18 Aug 2023) | YouGov" https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/08/21/voting-intention-con-26-lab-45-17-18-aug-2023
It wasn't so much that houses went up in value, but that the value of the currency went down to chase the falling price of goods. It was all a grotesque con that has done more than anything to lead the us into the social and economic malaise we now face.
To distract myself from current medical treatment, I went in search of a long lost 400 yd piece of public footpath across a former recreation ground (roundabout and swings, football pitch long gone) on a 6km or so signposted walking / cycling route the way I used to walk to infant school a few years ago.
The path was barriered off a *long* time ago (unlawfully I think since the Disability Discrimination Act 1995), and as a result all that is left now in places is a 2ft wide muddy trail able to accommodate a fat labrador and its owner, who are about the only group that can practically use it. It used to be 2m of tarmac.
And I found it. Under a mat of overgrowth. Now to get the Council to remove the obstructions and maintain it - somehow, and on to the other 90% of the signposted route.
I would say Green will land at 3%. They've been heading slowly downwards, always over-perform in locals and underperform in GEs, and they don't have Caroline Lucas as a visible sitting MP defending a seat this time. But they won't vanish. We can probably add all the rest to Labour, as a rough guess.
Refuk will collapse, down to 2%. But some of those will not vote. So let's say for Refuk, like Green, all but 3% return Tory. That takes us back to pre-Rishi levels which feels about right.
Lib Dem: let's assume much greater efficiency due to tactical voting and organic changes (Lib Dems appealing more in Tory South and SW). So I would say roughly 6% of their their 10-14% recent range will fall in the wrong places and vice versa Lab votes in LD targets. This is the trickiest one to factor in.
That then gives us an adjusted LLG vs RefCon figure. Lab + (LD-6) + (G-3) vs Con + (Ref-3)
or, if we want to plug numbers into a UNS calculator we keep Lib Dem separate, i.e. Lab + (G-3) vs Con + (Ref-3) vs LD (unadjusted).
Then we can do our separate calculations about Scotland, which is surely the hardest to predict because of so many marginals.
But the potential for councils to acquire building land way below the 'market' price gives them a genuine opportunity -and the wherewithal - to rebuild council housing stock on their own account.
Whether that it how the policy works out remains to be seen.
If you are a commercial developer, it can be rational to stop building houses- once you have the land and permission, you want to wait until you can sell the resulting houses for as much profit as possible. See the current falloff in new house completions;
https://developmentfinancetoday.co.uk/article-desc-9608_new-homes-registrations-and-completions-drop-in-q2-2023
The state has a different success criterion; number built. Probably a steadier (but lower) work and income flow for builders and contractors.
I don't know if Starmer's plans will be enough, but they should help, and it's hard to see any current version of Conservatism doing the necessary.
Maybe, 'I left my boyfriend. He said he was the manager at the zoo, but turns out he only cleans out the big cats. He spends his time lion about his job.'
I think yours works better though.
Slightly odd feeling of being out of step time wise BTW to read this discussion when council house building has been a thing in Scotland again for quite a while, as DavidL and I have noted before.
Central bankers missed the fact that globalisation was the reason CPI was low, and therefore allowed low interest rates to persist for too long, which meant lots of money flowed into housing pushing prices higher.
Of course, this should have spurred housebuilding, but planning constraints limited this somewhat. (Also, if we'd imported more brickies and fewer baristas, that might have helped.)
And in any case, that would immediately cut off his access to whatever social media platform he's using today...
Against what was the pound being consistently devalued?
For that matter, what other developed world country's currency was being consistently devalued?
Indeed, I'd argue the lack of China currency appreciation (or pound/dollar/Euro depreciation relative to it) was a major part of the problem.
Con+RefUK: 30-36
Lab+LD+Grn: 59-64
That's still a huge lead for the left, and leaves plenty of scope for tactical voting to amplify Labour's results. The Red&Wilt result is fairly central in that range: 34-61.
It was always to be expected that leads of 20+ would not be sustained. No party has had such a large lead at a general election since the highly exceptional 1931 contest. All other such periods of polling dominance have declined as the election approached. On the other hand, all other such periods were followed by an election where the party demonstrating that dominance won (even after an almighty car-crash of a campaign in 2017).
The village itself is of no consequence, but its location is.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/08/22/isw-ukrainian-forces-make-tactically-significant-advances-near-robotyne/
..ISW previously assessed that Ukrainian attacks on Robotyne were of tactical significance because advances in the area could potentially allow Ukrainian forces to operate outside of the densest Russian minefields. Continued Ukrainian troop advances across the fields in the region support this assessment.
According to ISW, the ongoing Ukrainian advances in the Robotyne area are also likely intended to weaken Russian forces, who have invested significant effort, resources, and personnel to maintain their positions around Robotyne..
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-year-old-refugium-orcas-northern-pacific.html
... In a recent paper published in Marine Mammal Science, she and colleagues explore the complex interaction between orca culture and post-glacial history of their colonization of the North Pacific, showing that the orca pods currently living near Nemuro Strait in northern Japan are descendants of orcas that settled there during the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago. The location was chosen as a refugium by distant ancestors, and their descendants have lived there ever since.
"Orcas are conservative and tradition-bound creatures who do not move or change their traditions unless there is a very good reason for it. We see that in this population," says Filatova.
This is the second time she has found an orca refugium from the Ice Age. The first one is near the Aleutian Islands, some 2500 km away. The pods there are just as conservative and tradition-bound as their Japanese conspecifics, and are also descendants of Ice Age ancestors who found refuge in ice-free waters.
"When the ice began to retreat again, and orcas and other whales could swim to new ice-free areas, some of them did not follow. They stayed in their [refugia], and they are still living there," says Filatova...
Here's a shortish vid from this morning about it. An anti-Trump editorial view point.
https://youtu.be/6uByA4SrQwM?t=103
Yes, it was a combined failure of western monetary policy, but that doesn't excuse it.
Come the GE, I'd expect Starmer to offer just enough of a whiff of socialism, undetectable to the right-wing press, to tempt most of the left sliders back.
You want to recycle your capital as quickly as possible.
Let me give you an example.
In one world you can build a house for $1m and sell it for $1.5m, and you can do it every two years.
On the other, you can build a house for $1m, and sell it for $1.2m, but do it every 6 months.
In the first case, you make a 50% return on your investment; in the second, only 20%.
But here's the thing, you can make $0.2m four times in the same time it takes you to make $0.5m once.
Labour has led consistently in double-figures for almost 11 months now. That's literally consistently - the last sub-Lab+10 lead was 26 Sept 2022. No party has been so dominant for so long since pre-Iraq Blair.
It's also over 20 months since a Tory lead, since when a lot of water has flowed under the bridge to seriously tarnish the Tory brand.
And it's notable how easy it is to get into a new comfort zone, with Mike here talking about a Labour lead of "just 15%". Remember that between 2002-22, Labour never recorded a lead of more than 16%. Corbyn never had one of more than 10% (and that only because the Tories were collapsing faster than Labour in early 2019); Sunak has never faced a Lab lead of less than 10%.
Labour may not be loved or trusted like it was by many in 1997 (it's doubtful that any party would be again, and that may be no bad thing - though cynicism can easily go too far the other way), but it'll be tolerated enough. Until after the election, anyway.
Which is true. (In the US/UK/China at least)
But that's not the only thing money is spent on.
Dear me.
No wonder she left him.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
And it might happen, Events dear boy and all that. But it would have to be a damn big event, or the biggest choke in political history to change the path now.
Incidentally, the 2001 landslide was based on a mere 9 percent lead, 41-32. Different map, sure, but FPTP is a cruel thing when you're losing and everyone is against you.
When the price of TVs fell year on year for decades, the TV makers didn't stop producing TVs. Why? Because the other guys would take the market.
The Victorians/Edwardians recognised this - hence limiting developers to one street (or even half a street) in a development. Which is why, when you go down a road of semis from that period, you see a run of identical houses, then a slightly different design for a further x houses...
If the council buys some land, I will bet they partner up with a big firm. Probably on profit share. Strangely, what will happen is... just the same.
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
Even if it can't be taken any time soon then having it within artillery range will at least cause problems. Everything will have to travel by the coast road.
Is that the source of our malaise? No. That comes from a collapse in productivity growth (precise cause uncertain), an ageing population (personally I think this is the main thing) and social media (which has spread discontent, misinformation and division).
A loud whistle and then this beautiful machine just powered past us at Denmark Hill, an unexpected bonus this morning.
It will be a big test of whether a Starmer government is any better than what we've had.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the effort went into the next tier down, which as it turned out were just too big a set of nuts to crack at that time. Consequently, virtually no seats in either category fell, though many of the majorities did.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
But what is the trend?
*The least strange thing since strangeness was invented.
IIRC one original reason was that inflation was the trigger for interest rates, and counting mortgage payments in the basket of purchases...
House price to income ratios used to be 3x in the North West, they're now 6.2x - that's more than doubled and is very insane.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-61784358
(lots of ground-nesting birds - there aren't many trees, nor many cliffs - with eggs that the little sonics find tasty)
This gives Labour majority of 410 and the LibDems in second place.
Its funny the doublethink people are able to willingly engage in, insisting that housing is an asset so should be disregarded for inflation, and a necessary cost so disregarded for taxation. The truth is your own home always has been and always will be a necessary cost, much more than an asset, so should be included in the basket.
Today's example is the Criminal Cases Review Commission whose behaviour in the Andy Malkinson case is under question. So it announces an inquiry but does not have the wit or decency to consult Andy Malkinson about its terms or even to tell him of the announcement before it goes to the press.
A small example maybe but so telling of an attitude of mind which refuses to understand that these bodies and services are meant to be there to serve people.
What would it have cost them to inform him in advance? What would it have cost them to listen to his views?
Was there nobody in such an organisation to remember that this review is being undertaken because of the harm done to a human being? Was there nobody to think of how he might be feeling being treated once again as an irrelevance?
Areas: Very very top of the East Midlands
Housing is a necessary, consumption, cost for those who are paying for it to have a roof over their heads. So if you're renting, or buying, its consumption.
For those who own to make a profit, whether it be a bank or landlord or pension scheme letting it out, then its an asset.
Just as a stock of cars owned by a leasing company or car manufacturer are assets for them, but if you buy a car for yourself or lease one for yourself then its consumption.
It does illustrate the fragility of FPTP majorities. The SNP is a good current example, but the Tories could provide another example.
In the 1993 Canadian federal election the governing Progressive Conservative Party, which had been in office for nearly a decade, was reduced from an overall majority of 156 seats to only two with a 25% drop in their vote. Could the Tories suffer a 25% drop in their vote? Perhaps.
Developers are building and selling properties all over the North West at prices which both fit the market and make the firm a profit. They're not doing so for charity.
Median FTSE-100 boss pay compared to median full-time worker pay in the UK:
2020: 79x higher
2021: 108x higher
2022: 118x higher
Quote
Financial Times
@FT
FTSE 100 bosses given average 16% pay rises https://on.ft.com/3sbNKmL
As for what weight to give it, that should be weighted based on the proportion of expenditure that goes to pay for it typically.