-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Reminder that the rate of inflation fell today. A good news story, and one perfectly aligned with Rishi Sunak's 5 pledges...
Yes, that's a very good point.
I don't think for one that Sunak deserves credit at all for the rate of inflation falling, but for Sunak he should be claiming it nonetheless and that should be the news today and instead its chaos that makes Ed Miliband look the the font of serenity.
"Since 1970, implementation of the Clean Air Act and technological advances from American innovators have dramatically improved air quality in the U.S. Since that time, the combined emissions of criteria and precursor pollutants have dropped by 78%. Cleaner air provides important public health benefits, and we commend our state, local, and industry partners for helping further long-term improvement in our air quality." https://gispub.epa.gov/air/trendsreport/2021/#welcome
Sources in the car industry utterly furious with the government - senior figure tells me they received personal reassurances from govt ministers that everything was on track just LAST WEEK - no mention of this delay at that point
“The UK is closed for business,” they say
Those of us who thought anyone would be better than Truss are getting a tad worried that we may be proved wrong.
Rishi looks like an utter joke from here.
Last week US Twitter was wondering why the British Prime Minister was making a substance-free announcement about dogs - the sort of thing you’d expect here from the mayor of a middle-sized town.
That sounds like an old-fashioned cultural cringe on your part.
Not really.
Don’t you think it’s just BIZARRE that a the PM of a nuclear powered country should release a special announcement on a dog ban? It absolutely trivialises him.
It says a lot, both about the UK’s absurdly over-centralised governance, and indeed a kind of death of sane comms policy in an age of social media.
(NB, I agree with the ban itself).
So a leader of a nuclear power shouldn’t be making statements when there is a spate of attacks and death from something that is dangerous, should be banned, is far from what the original rules and customs existed for.
I’m guessing Biden will not make any pronouncements about gun ownership in the US after the next spate of shootings - he should just leave it to whichever minister is responsible?
Or Macron will keep quiet about any newsworthy problem in France where the media are baying for action?
I’m also guessing that the media will stop asking leaders what they think or what they are going to do about situations as it would trivialise the leaders having to opine on anything.
You are spectacularly missing the point.
First, in an ideal world, this would be an issue for individual councils, not central government.
Second, this is a second-order issue which should have been fronted by the Environment or Local Government Secretary or whatever.
Rishi of course hopes to curry some short-term favour for publicly addressing the issue, but it comes at the cost of more sustainable gravitas and credibility.
And it doesn’t seem to have done anything for his cratering popularity anyway.
Why the heck should this be an issue for individual councils? What is legal or illegal is a matter for central government, quite rightly.
There was a fatal attack near a school IIRC? The Prime Minister speaking about that is entirely reasonable, the fact it was about dogs is just because the UK doesn't have fatal school shootings so this is our level of outrage. Regardless of party politics, that's a good thing.
The next time there's a fatal shooting in or outside a school, I wonder if you'll express the same level of criticism of Biden that this should be a matter for Councils, not the President?
Sunak has a lot to be criticised for, and I will join in quite frequently and vote against him and his party, but to criticise him for speaking on what is quite literally a newsworthy matter of life or death? That's just petty and diminishes legitimate criticisms.
The problem is that due to a lack of FreeDumb, we have fallen massively behind the US in the field of mass deaths in schools. This restricts the issues that a UK PM can solemnly intone on.
A Dynamic Britai would get Accuracy International to rise to the challenge of arming every fuckwit and sociopath with pseudo military weapons. Perhaps we need the EM-2 to be resurrected? It's in an Imperial measurement calibre....
7.62mm *is* an imperial calibre ... and so is 5.56mm (the old 0.22").
.280 hasn't, officially, been contaminated with Metric.
Interestingly, some of the reason for not resurrecting the EM-2 have gone away.
The British Army needs a new gun. Being able to chamber something bigger than 5.56 is seen as a good idea. It's construction - carved out of chucks of steel, rather than stamped, is actually very amenable to modern mass production techniques.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
Of course, it is important they have a successful future as someone has to pay the rent on all those BtLs.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Sources in the car industry utterly furious with the government - senior figure tells me they received personal reassurances from govt ministers that everything was on track just LAST WEEK - no mention of this delay at that point
“The UK is closed for business,” they say
Those of us who thought anyone would be better than Truss are getting a tad worried that we may be proved wrong.
Rishi looks like an utter joke from here.
Last week US Twitter was wondering why the British Prime Minister was making a substance-free announcement about dogs - the sort of thing you’d expect here from the mayor of a middle-sized town.
That sounds like an old-fashioned cultural cringe on your part.
Not really.
Don’t you think it’s just BIZARRE that a the PM of a nuclear powered country should release a special announcement on a dog ban? It absolutely trivialises him.
It says a lot, both about the UK’s absurdly over-centralised governance, and indeed a kind of death of sane comms policy in an age of social media.
(NB, I agree with the ban itself).
So a leader of a nuclear power shouldn’t be making statements when there is a spate of attacks and death from something that is dangerous, should be banned, is far from what the original rules and customs existed for.
I’m guessing Biden will not make any pronouncements about gun ownership in the US after the next spate of shootings - he should just leave it to whichever minister is responsible?
Or Macron will keep quiet about any newsworthy problem in France where the media are baying for action?
I’m also guessing that the media will stop asking leaders what they think or what they are going to do about situations as it would trivialise the leaders having to opine on anything.
You are spectacularly missing the point.
First, in an ideal world, this would be an issue for individual councils, not central government.
Second, this is a second-order issue which should have been fronted by the Environment or Local Government Secretary or whatever.
Rishi of course hopes to curry some short-term favour for publicly addressing the issue, but it comes at the cost of more sustainable gravitas and credibility.
And it doesn’t seem to have done anything for his cratering popularity anyway.
Why the heck should this be an issue for individual councils? What is legal or illegal is a matter for central government, quite rightly.
There was a fatal attack near a school IIRC? The Prime Minister speaking about that is entirely reasonable, the fact it was about dogs is just because the UK doesn't have fatal school shootings so this is our level of outrage. Regardless of party politics, that's a good thing.
The next time there's a fatal shooting in or outside a school, I wonder if you'll express the same level of criticism of Biden that this should be a matter for Councils, not the President?
Sunak has a lot to be criticised for, and I will join in quite frequently and vote against him and his party, but to criticise him for speaking on what is quite literally a newsworthy matter of life or death? That's just petty and diminishes legitimate criticisms.
The problem is that due to a lack of FreeDumb, we have fallen massively behind the US in the field of mass deaths in schools. This restricts the issues that a UK PM can solemnly intone on.
A Dynamic Britai would get Accuracy International to rise to the challenge of arming every fuckwit and sociopath with pseudo military weapons. Perhaps we need the EM-2 to be resurrected? It's in an Imperial measurement calibre....
7.62mm *is* an imperial calibre ... and so is 5.56mm (the old 0.22").
.280 hasn't, officially, been contaminated with Metric.
Interestingly, some of the reason for not resurrecting the EM-2 have gone away.
The British Army needs a new gun. Being able to chamber something bigger than 5.56 is seen as a good idea. It's construction - carved out of chucks of steel, rather than stamped, is actually very amenable to modern mass production techniques.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
The funny thing is that a large number of PB-ers and Boris have exactly the same views on this and for the same reasons.
Very well off, performative concern about the planet, lecturing those around them, with precisely no clue about how the real world works or the people living in it.
Nothing in either case to do with the planet.
The funny thing is I'm not entirely sure I agree with Sunak delaying the ban on ICE and certainly not if he lied to business leaders about it but I assume there must be a reason for it. There are a lot of practicalities involved.
If it is aligning with the EU - later (2035), but complete ban on ICE - I wouldn't be surprised.
There would be considerable pressure for the UK to harmonise with the European car market.
When you say complete ban on ICE - you mean you wouldn't be able to drive ICE after 2035?
Given the rate it is disappearing in the Arctic, the Antarctic and not to mention inland glaciers, is this really the right time to ban ICE? I suggest delaying this until we have global warming more under control.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
The environment has genuinely never been better, CO2 emissions are massively down in the UK in the past decades.
The problems seen by the younger generations, are almost all down to the cost of housing not keeping up with the increase in population. The only way out is to build millions of houses as quickly as possible, and for the younger generation to promise to vote against any politician who wants to get in the way of building more houses.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
This is where I disagree, having just agreed to your last post.
The neoliberal turn was positive and led to an all-time high in homeownership and aspiration. The reforms in the 1980s followed by the 1990s with low house prices etc enabled more than ever before, or ever since, to get a home of their own. Young people had opportunities never before seen.
The problem is they've not been seen again since. In the 1990s you could buy a house with a 10% deposit for 0.25x your annual income since houses were 2.5x incomes (often lower, that was an average). Nowadays you're expected to be able to get 0.7x your annual income as a deposit, while paying rents for decades and the prices ever escalating. And people who were incredibly fortunate to grow up in the past stick their heads in the sand and insist how difficult the past was when the facts show the polar opposite.
Aspiration should suit all generations. We need to return to the neoliberal aspirations of the 1980s and 1990s. The problem was that having got people into a home of their own in the 1980s and 1990s, the 2000s saw "buy to let" as the next step of progress rather than a heinous reversion of the rights of the young to be able to expect to buy to live.
And only ~2/3 of the votes for the second placed Conservative. Could all be Con voters signing. Could be that 1/3 of Con voters support the 20mph policy and will shake for the Drake next time?
Perhaps you are joking but 284,000 signatures is extraordinary for something that only affects Wales. Are non-residents piling in? One thing to bear in mind is that issues that effect motorists can be politically explosive. Remember the 2000 fuel protests and the anger over possible road pricing in the past?
I haven't made my mind up on the issue as I'm not a driver and I still don't fully understand how it will all work. I'll be keen to hear peoples' reactions.
10k signatories fess up to being from England. I'd assume more are signing it with a Welsh postcode while outwith the country. Probably some bots too (for all petitions, not just this one). I But yes, it's an easy thing to get people fired up about, driving. Closing in on 10% of the population is pretty spectacular. But how will people feel in a year, once they've experienced the reality a bit more? I don't know. The Welsh Government had better make sure they (correctly) pin any ridiculous 20mph limit stretches on the local councils.
It won't last a year
The outcry is across the Welsh media, social media, and spoken about by neighbours and friends and work colleagues
As I have said changes will be made but right now Drakeford and the Welsh government is being held responsible not the LAs
Maybe a lesson to Starmer not to go there in England
If more than 10% of Welsh voters have genuinely signed the petition that's quite extraordinary.
The one thing to note is that 600 people were convicted of crimes which did not happen on the basis of flawed accounting evidence from a system used by the Post Office and which they knew was flawed but covered up. The Post Office lied - to defendants, to the courts - and kept on lying. People went to prison, lost homes, businesses. Some committed suicide. Eventually some convictions were overturned and it is now accepted that the Post Office and Fujitsu, suppliers of the crap system, are in the wrong but they have suffered no adverse consequences and the subpostmasters are fighting to get justice and compensation, through an interminable inquiry being obstructed, frankly, by the incompetence and very likely worse of the Post Office.
And those in charge - the Ministers - are being feeble about holding those responsible to account.
That's about it.
It pretty much sums up much of public life in this country these days. I may come across as a Moaning Minnie about it all. In reality I am furious. A scythe should be taken to so many of those in charge.
Thanks Cyclefree, and thanks for your earlier response to my post below.
Yes, it can happen to anyone. I always used to think these kinds of conspiracies were rare and you had to be either careless or unlucky to be caught up in them, but I am less sure now.
The PO Scandal is alarming because these were perfectly ordinary, law-abiding employees crushed by an institution that they trusted, and for no better reason than that numerous executives and consultants wished to cover their arses.
In the past five years I have twice personally experienced lying by State institutions we ought to be able to rely on - first HMRC (I got an apology and small amount of damages), and then the Police (still under enquiry and it's probably not going anywhere but it should never have happened in the first place.) Neither matter was particulalrly serious but the striking thing was that in both instances Officers were prepared to lie, in written evidence, purely as a matter of their convenience.
I'm bloody-minded enough to make a stand. My advice to you all is be bloody minded. And don't trust these guys. Carry recording equipment and never be interviewed alone, without legal support or an independent witness.
I bet most of these poor sods who trusted the PO wish they hadn't done so,
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The one thing to note is that 600 people were convicted of crimes which did not happen on the basis of flawed accounting evidence from a system used by the Post Office and which they knew was flawed but covered up. The Post Office lied - to defendants, to the courts - and kept on lying. People went to prison, lost homes, businesses. Some committed suicide. Eventually some convictions were overturned and it is now accepted that the Post Office and Fujitsu, suppliers of the crap system, are in the wrong but they have suffered no adverse consequences and the subpostmasters are fighting to get justice and compensation, through an interminable inquiry being obstructed, frankly, by the incompetence and very likely worse of the Post Office.
And those in charge - the Ministers - are being feeble about holding those responsible to account.
That's about it.
It pretty much sums up much of public life in this country these days. I may come across as a Moaning Minnie about it all. In reality I am furious. A scythe should be taken to so many of those in charge.
Thanks Cyclefree, and thanks for your earlier response to my post below.
Yes, it can happen to anyone. I always used to think these kinds of conspiracies were rare and you had to be either careless or unlucky to be caught up in them, but I am less sure now.
The PO Scandal is alarming because these were perfectly ordinary, law-abiding employees crushed by an institution that they trusted, and for no better reason than that numerous executives and consultants wished to cover their arses.
In the past five years I have twice personally experienced lying by State institutions we ought to be able to rely on - first HMRC (I got an apology and small amount of damages), and then the Police (still under enquiry and its probably not going anywhere but it should never have happened in the first place.) Neither matter was particulalrly serious but the striking thing was that in both instances Officers were prepared to lie, in written evidence, purely as a matter of their convenience.
I'm bloody-minded enough to make a stand. My advice to you all is be bloody minded. And don't trust these guys. Carry recording equipment and never be interviewed alone, without legal support or an independent witness.
I bet most of these poor sods who trusted the PO wish they hadn't done so,
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
Sources in the car industry utterly furious with the government - senior figure tells me they received personal reassurances from govt ministers that everything was on track just LAST WEEK - no mention of this delay at that point
“The UK is closed for business,” they say
Those of us who thought anyone would be better than Truss are getting a tad worried that we may be proved wrong.
Rishi looks like an utter joke from here.
Last week US Twitter was wondering why the British Prime Minister was making a substance-free announcement about dogs - the sort of thing you’d expect here from the mayor of a middle-sized town.
That sounds like an old-fashioned cultural cringe on your part.
Not really.
Don’t you think it’s just BIZARRE that a the PM of a nuclear powered country should release a special announcement on a dog ban? It absolutely trivialises him.
It says a lot, both about the UK’s absurdly over-centralised governance, and indeed a kind of death of sane comms policy in an age of social media.
(NB, I agree with the ban itself).
So a leader of a nuclear power shouldn’t be making statements when there is a spate of attacks and death from something that is dangerous, should be banned, is far from what the original rules and customs existed for.
I’m guessing Biden will not make any pronouncements about gun ownership in the US after the next spate of shootings - he should just leave it to whichever minister is responsible?
Or Macron will keep quiet about any newsworthy problem in France where the media are baying for action?
I’m also guessing that the media will stop asking leaders what they think or what they are going to do about situations as it would trivialise the leaders having to opine on anything.
You are spectacularly missing the point.
First, in an ideal world, this would be an issue for individual councils, not central government.
Second, this is a second-order issue which should have been fronted by the Environment or Local Government Secretary or whatever.
Rishi of course hopes to curry some short-term favour for publicly addressing the issue, but it comes at the cost of more sustainable gravitas and credibility.
And it doesn’t seem to have done anything for his cratering popularity anyway.
Why the heck should this be an issue for individual councils? What is legal or illegal is a matter for central government, quite rightly.
There was a fatal attack near a school IIRC? The Prime Minister speaking about that is entirely reasonable, the fact it was about dogs is just because the UK doesn't have fatal school shootings so this is our level of outrage. Regardless of party politics, that's a good thing.
The next time there's a fatal shooting in or outside a school, I wonder if you'll express the same level of criticism of Biden that this should be a matter for Councils, not the President?
Sunak has a lot to be criticised for, and I will join in quite frequently and vote against him and his party, but to criticise him for speaking on what is quite literally a newsworthy matter of life or death? That's just petty and diminishes legitimate criticisms.
The problem is that due to a lack of FreeDumb, we have fallen massively behind the US in the field of mass deaths in schools. This restricts the issues that a UK PM can solemnly intone on.
A Dynamic Britai would get Accuracy International to rise to the challenge of arming every fuckwit and sociopath with pseudo military weapons. Perhaps we need the EM-2 to be resurrected? It's in an Imperial measurement calibre....
7.62mm *is* an imperial calibre ... and so is 5.56mm (the old 0.22").
.280 hasn't, officially, been contaminated with Metric.
Interestingly, some of the reason for not resurrecting the EM-2 have gone away.
The British Army needs a new gun. Being able to chamber something bigger than 5.56 is seen as a good idea. It's construction - carved out of chucks of steel, rather than stamped, is actually very amenable to modern mass production techniques.
.50 will always be .50.
It’ll never be a 12.8mm.
Not least because it is actually 12.7 mm. Or, to be fair, 0.5" originally.
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
And only ~2/3 of the votes for the second placed Conservative. Could all be Con voters signing. Could be that 1/3 of Con voters support the 20mph policy and will shake for the Drake next time?
Perhaps you are joking but 284,000 signatures is extraordinary for something that only affects Wales. Are non-residents piling in? One thing to bear in mind is that issues that effect motorists can be politically explosive. Remember the 2000 fuel protests and the anger over possible road pricing in the past?
I haven't made my mind up on the issue as I'm not a driver and I still don't fully understand how it will all work. I'll be keen to hear peoples' reactions.
10k signatories fess up to being from England. I'd assume more are signing it with a Welsh postcode while outwith the country. Probably some bots too (for all petitions, not just this one).
But yes, it's an easy thing to get people fired up about, driving. Closing in on 10% of the population is pretty spectacular. But how will people feel in a year, once they've experienced the reality a bit more? I don't know. The Welsh Government had better make sure they (correctly) pin any ridiculous 20mph limit stretches on the local councils.
Not fessing up - when you log into the petition there is a drop down where you indicate where in the UK you are from. It is specifically designed this way.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
No.
House prices have risen so much because restrictions on developments have meant housing construction hasn't kept pace.
Population growth has happened for centuries, that's not a problem so long as construction keeps pace and there's no reason why it shouldn't have besides our broken planning system and NIMBYism.
I notice no-one has answered my question on the cost of energy for EV cars versus petrol cars. I genuinely don't know the answer so I'd appreciate a response.
This might help:
"MPGe is the unit of measurement for an electric car’s energy consumption level to compare with gas-powered vehicles’ fuel consumption. A gas-powered car earning 35 miles per gallon is considered to be great. EVs can get 100 MPGe with ease."
They are talking about American gallons, but the comparison is still valid.
If the electricity is coming from your solar panels it could be free or from Octopus etc overnight it could be cheap. Also carbon free depending on the source.
I mean the cost of the energy. What is the cost per mile of electric versus petrol. I'm guessing petrol is about 10p per mile if you exclude tax.
Considerably less than 10p before tax. My diesel car is about 11-12p a mile after tax, that's more like 6-7p before tax.
Any cost savings for end users from running EVs are pretty much all tax arbitrarge rather than actual savings. (Before anyone brings up servicing, my car is serviced more frequently than it's manufacturers schedule - it's dead easy, I do it every 10k miles, it takes 15 minutes and the consumables cost about £25, so about 0.25p/mile).
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
No.
House prices have risen so much because restrictions on developments have meant housing construction hasn't kept pace.
Population growth has happened for centuries, that's not a problem so long as construction keeps pace and there's no reason why it shouldn't have besides our broken planning system and NIMBYism.
The tax system is a big factor too, Bart, and probably always will be.
Sources in the car industry utterly furious with the government - senior figure tells me they received personal reassurances from govt ministers that everything was on track just LAST WEEK - no mention of this delay at that point
“The UK is closed for business,” they say
Those of us who thought anyone would be better than Truss are getting a tad worried that we may be proved wrong.
Rishi looks like an utter joke from here.
Last week US Twitter was wondering why the British Prime Minister was making a substance-free announcement about dogs - the sort of thing you’d expect here from the mayor of a middle-sized town.
That sounds like an old-fashioned cultural cringe on your part.
Not really.
Don’t you think it’s just BIZARRE that a the PM of a nuclear powered country should release a special announcement on a dog ban? It absolutely trivialises him.
It says a lot, both about the UK’s absurdly over-centralised governance, and indeed a kind of death of sane comms policy in an age of social media.
(NB, I agree with the ban itself).
So a leader of a nuclear power shouldn’t be making statements when there is a spate of attacks and death from something that is dangerous, should be banned, is far from what the original rules and customs existed for.
I’m guessing Biden will not make any pronouncements about gun ownership in the US after the next spate of shootings - he should just leave it to whichever minister is responsible?
Or Macron will keep quiet about any newsworthy problem in France where the media are baying for action?
I’m also guessing that the media will stop asking leaders what they think or what they are going to do about situations as it would trivialise the leaders having to opine on anything.
You are spectacularly missing the point.
First, in an ideal world, this would be an issue for individual councils, not central government.
Second, this is a second-order issue which should have been fronted by the Environment or Local Government Secretary or whatever.
Rishi of course hopes to curry some short-term favour for publicly addressing the issue, but it comes at the cost of more sustainable gravitas and credibility.
And it doesn’t seem to have done anything for his cratering popularity anyway.
Why the heck should this be an issue for individual councils? What is legal or illegal is a matter for central government, quite rightly.
There was a fatal attack near a school IIRC? The Prime Minister speaking about that is entirely reasonable, the fact it was about dogs is just because the UK doesn't have fatal school shootings so this is our level of outrage. Regardless of party politics, that's a good thing.
The next time there's a fatal shooting in or outside a school, I wonder if you'll express the same level of criticism of Biden that this should be a matter for Councils, not the President?
Sunak has a lot to be criticised for, and I will join in quite frequently and vote against him and his party, but to criticise him for speaking on what is quite literally a newsworthy matter of life or death? That's just petty and diminishes legitimate criticisms.
The problem is that due to a lack of FreeDumb, we have fallen massively behind the US in the field of mass deaths in schools. This restricts the issues that a UK PM can solemnly intone on.
A Dynamic Britai would get Accuracy International to rise to the challenge of arming every fuckwit and sociopath with pseudo military weapons. Perhaps we need the EM-2 to be resurrected? It's in an Imperial measurement calibre....
7.62mm *is* an imperial calibre ... and so is 5.56mm (the old 0.22").
.280 hasn't, officially, been contaminated with Metric.
Interestingly, some of the reason for not resurrecting the EM-2 have gone away.
The British Army needs a new gun. Being able to chamber something bigger than 5.56 is seen as a good idea. It's construction - carved out of chucks of steel, rather than stamped, is actually very amenable to modern mass production techniques.
.50 will always be .50.
It’ll never be a 12.8mm.
Cries in Boyes 0.55
Definitely not 14.5mm, this time. I'll give you that.
And only ~2/3 of the votes for the second placed Conservative. Could all be Con voters signing. Could be that 1/3 of Con voters support the 20mph policy and will shake for the Drake next time?
Perhaps you are joking but 284,000 signatures is extraordinary for something that only affects Wales. Are non-residents piling in? One thing to bear in mind is that issues that effect motorists can be politically explosive. Remember the 2000 fuel protests and the anger over possible road pricing in the past?
I haven't made my mind up on the issue as I'm not a driver and I still don't fully understand how it will all work. I'll be keen to hear peoples' reactions.
10k signatories fess up to being from England. I'd assume more are signing it with a Welsh postcode while outwith the country. Probably some bots too (for all petitions, not just this one). I But yes, it's an easy thing to get people fired up about, driving. Closing in on 10% of the population is pretty spectacular. But how will people feel in a year, once they've experienced the reality a bit more? I don't know. The Welsh Government had better make sure they (correctly) pin any ridiculous 20mph limit stretches on the local councils.
It won't last a year
The outcry is across the Welsh media, social media, and spoken about by neighbours and friends and work colleagues
As I have said changes will be made but right now Drakeford and the Welsh government is being held responsible not the LAs
Maybe a lesson to Starmer not to go there in England
If more than 10% of Welsh voters have genuinely signed the petition that's quite extraordinary.
Hint to Drakeford: in Devon, there are plenty of 20 mph zones. But they all seem to have the addition of a "slow down for hedgehogs!" sign.....
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
Sources in the car industry utterly furious with the government - senior figure tells me they received personal reassurances from govt ministers that everything was on track just LAST WEEK - no mention of this delay at that point
“The UK is closed for business,” they say
Those of us who thought anyone would be better than Truss are getting a tad worried that we may be proved wrong.
Rishi looks like an utter joke from here.
Last week US Twitter was wondering why the British Prime Minister was making a substance-free announcement about dogs - the sort of thing you’d expect here from the mayor of a middle-sized town.
That sounds like an old-fashioned cultural cringe on your part.
Not really.
Don’t you think it’s just BIZARRE that a the PM of a nuclear powered country should release a special announcement on a dog ban? It absolutely trivialises him.
It says a lot, both about the UK’s absurdly over-centralised governance, and indeed a kind of death of sane comms policy in an age of social media.
(NB, I agree with the ban itself).
So a leader of a nuclear power shouldn’t be making statements when there is a spate of attacks and death from something that is dangerous, should be banned, is far from what the original rules and customs existed for.
I’m guessing Biden will not make any pronouncements about gun ownership in the US after the next spate of shootings - he should just leave it to whichever minister is responsible?
Or Macron will keep quiet about any newsworthy problem in France where the media are baying for action?
I’m also guessing that the media will stop asking leaders what they think or what they are going to do about situations as it would trivialise the leaders having to opine on anything.
You are spectacularly missing the point.
First, in an ideal world, this would be an issue for individual councils, not central government.
Second, this is a second-order issue which should have been fronted by the Environment or Local Government Secretary or whatever.
Rishi of course hopes to curry some short-term favour for publicly addressing the issue, but it comes at the cost of more sustainable gravitas and credibility.
And it doesn’t seem to have done anything for his cratering popularity anyway.
Why the heck should this be an issue for individual councils? What is legal or illegal is a matter for central government, quite rightly.
There was a fatal attack near a school IIRC? The Prime Minister speaking about that is entirely reasonable, the fact it was about dogs is just because the UK doesn't have fatal school shootings so this is our level of outrage. Regardless of party politics, that's a good thing.
The next time there's a fatal shooting in or outside a school, I wonder if you'll express the same level of criticism of Biden that this should be a matter for Councils, not the President?
Sunak has a lot to be criticised for, and I will join in quite frequently and vote against him and his party, but to criticise him for speaking on what is quite literally a newsworthy matter of life or death? That's just petty and diminishes legitimate criticisms.
The problem is that due to a lack of FreeDumb, we have fallen massively behind the US in the field of mass deaths in schools. This restricts the issues that a UK PM can solemnly intone on.
A Dynamic Britai would get Accuracy International to rise to the challenge of arming every fuckwit and sociopath with pseudo military weapons. Perhaps we need the EM-2 to be resurrected? It's in an Imperial measurement calibre....
7.62mm *is* an imperial calibre ... and so is 5.56mm (the old 0.22").
.280 hasn't, officially, been contaminated with Metric.
Interestingly, some of the reason for not resurrecting the EM-2 have gone away.
The British Army needs a new gun. Being able to chamber something bigger than 5.56 is seen as a good idea. It's construction - carved out of chucks of steel, rather than stamped, is actually very amenable to modern mass production techniques.
.50 will always be .50.
It’ll never be a 12.8mm.
Not least because it is actually 12.7 mm. Or, to be fair, 0.5" originally.
Feck you’re right, I shouldnt try and do maths in the pub!
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
Don’t see why that would matter. The program wasn’t advice on how to enjoy drugs, but how to deal with the problem of people taking them
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
No. House prices have risen because they have become the sole asset that earlier generations were allowed to keep during the slashing and burning of the public assets, the social safety nets, and worker wage growth. So housing prices had to inflate otherwise people would have realised they were getting poorer over the last 30 years. Selling council houses and refusing to build replacements meant cheap and stable renting situations became harder to find, leading to rents being able to increase as landlords had no competition. Affordable housing stopped being built in favour of big family homes that could be sold at a premium to rich people or more landlords. If we had built a council house for every one sold through right to buy, the number of people wouldn't really matter than much.
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
Perhaps drugs will do for a post-politics Michael Gove what trains did for Michael Portillo.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
No. House prices have risen because they have become the sole asset that earlier generations were allowed to keep during the slashing and burning of the public assets, the social safety nets, and worker wage growth. So housing prices had to inflate otherwise people would have realised they were getting poorer over the last 30 years. Selling council houses and refusing to build replacements meant cheap and stable renting situations became harder to find, leading to rents being able to increase as landlords had no competition. Affordable housing stopped being built in favour of big family homes that could be sold at a premium to rich people or more landlords. If we had built a council house for every one sold through right to buy, the number of people wouldn't really matter than much.
It is only illiberalism that means there's no competition.
If we had a liberal system then anyone could build what they want and there'd be competition.
If you own a shitbox you want to let out for a fortune you'll suddenly find yourself holding a useless bit of unoccupied land and building because nobody would rent from you when they could rent from a better competitor, or better yet buy.
Don't confuse what we have with liberalism, or neoliberalism. What we have is the polar opposite of a liberal system.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
I think it's fair to say that average house prices have risen since the 70s at a higher rate than general inflation and average wages - is this disputable? Assuming not - why has this happened?
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Worth pointing out that the older generations who benefited from all those things also benefited from a highly favourable demographic structure. In short, the working population was a much bigger proportion of the overall population. We, along with much of the western world, are going through a demographic transition from an age-sex diagram shaped like a pyramid to one shaped like an exotic skyscraper with a twiddly bit on the top to, potentially, one shaped like the Wyrmberg (the upside down mountain from Terry Pratchett's first Discworld book). This is painfully, preposterously expensive, particularly when 60 years ago policy decisions like pensions were made on the assumption that the pyramid would continue indefinitely. You have to get out of the ponzi scheme at some point, but it is seldom pleasant to do so.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
Sources in the car industry utterly furious with the government - senior figure tells me they received personal reassurances from govt ministers that everything was on track just LAST WEEK - no mention of this delay at that point
“The UK is closed for business,” they say
Those of us who thought anyone would be better than Truss are getting a tad worried that we may be proved wrong.
Rishi looks like an utter joke from here.
Last week US Twitter was wondering why the British Prime Minister was making a substance-free announcement about dogs - the sort of thing you’d expect here from the mayor of a middle-sized town.
That sounds like an old-fashioned cultural cringe on your part.
Not really.
Don’t you think it’s just BIZARRE that a the PM of a nuclear powered country should release a special announcement on a dog ban? It absolutely trivialises him.
It says a lot, both about the UK’s absurdly over-centralised governance, and indeed a kind of death of sane comms policy in an age of social media.
(NB, I agree with the ban itself).
It was the most important issue of the day, and most people would expect the PM to talk about it. Not bizarre at all in my opinion.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
Are you a neoliberal when it comes to migration, or do you believe in controls?
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
This is where I disagree, having just agreed to your last post.
The neoliberal turn was positive and led to an all-time high in homeownership and aspiration. The reforms in the 1980s followed by the 1990s with low house prices etc enabled more than ever before, or ever since, to get a home of their own. Young people had opportunities never before seen.
The problem is they've not been seen again since. In the 1990s you could buy a house with a 10% deposit for 0.25x your annual income since houses were 2.5x incomes (often lower, that was an average). Nowadays you're expected to be able to get 0.7x your annual income as a deposit, while paying rents for decades and the prices ever escalating. And people who were incredibly fortunate to grow up in the past stick their heads in the sand and insist how difficult the past was when the facts show the polar opposite.
Aspiration should suit all generations. We need to return to the neoliberal aspirations of the 1980s and 1990s. The problem was that having got people into a home of their own in the 1980s and 1990s, the 2000s saw "buy to let" as the next step of progress rather than a heinous reversion of the rights of the young to be able to expect to buy to live.
When I got married, back in the 60’s my wife was working, and continued to do until our first child was on the way. That was normal practice. Our grandson and his wife have, not long ago, given us what we hope will be first of several great-grandchildren. Both are teachers, both are working full time. The baby spends 3days a week with child-minders and the rest of the time with his grandparents. They need the two salaries, over and above the costs of childcare.
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
Don’t see why that would matter. The program wasn’t advice on how to enjoy drugs, but how to deal with the problem of people taking them
So you'd have a non-driver fronting a programme on TWOC-ing? If you have a programme about taking drugs, who would you best have fronting it - Russell Brand or Peter Hitchens? Perhaps Brand would be even more the obvious choice today.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
The fact that our biggest problem is the one area we are most illiberal should show you the strength of liberalism and why we should liberalise our illiberal housing market.
Houses shouldn't be an asset for wealth.
Houses should be a cost for having a roof over your head and good quality of life.
Absolutely burn it down. Let people who want assets invest in other things, like invest businesses that can make a positive return.
They can hold onto houses if they please, no harm in that, so long as competition means nobody is obliged to let those houses due to a lack of an alternative. If all they hold is empty premises, lets see how long those assets remain valuable to them.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
Are you a neoliberal when it comes to migration, or do you believe in controls?
It's a common trait of neoenvironmentalists to simultaneously want more humans and more housebuilding - especially over greenfield sites. Puzzling.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Worth pointing out that the older generations who benefited from all those things also benefited from a highly favourable demographic structure. In short, the working population was a much bigger proportion of the overall population. We, along with much of the western world, are going through a demographic transition from an age-sex diagram shaped like a pyramid to one shaped like an exotic skyscraper with a twiddly bit on the top to, potentially, one shaped like the Wyrmberg (the upside down mountain from Terry Pratchett's first Discworld book). This is painfully, preposterously expensive, particularly when 60 years ago policy decisions like pensions were made on the assumption that the pyramid would continue indefinitely. You have to get out of the ponzi scheme at some point, but it is seldom pleasant to do so.
So should I continue to work in my early 70s in order to mitigate what one might call an inverted pyramid of people, or should I give way to someone less than half my age so they can sustain me in idleness?
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
No. House prices have risen because they have become the sole asset that earlier generations were allowed to keep during the slashing and burning of the public assets, the social safety nets, and worker wage growth. So housing prices had to inflate otherwise people would have realised they were getting poorer over the last 30 years. Selling council houses and refusing to build replacements meant cheap and stable renting situations became harder to find, leading to rents being able to increase as landlords had no competition. Affordable housing stopped being built in favour of big family homes that could be sold at a premium to rich people or more landlords. If we had built a council house for every one sold through right to buy, the number of people wouldn't really matter than much.
Wrong. The total population has increased, far, far more than all the properties sold under right to buy.
This has resulted in a price spiral that means that nothing is affordable, in large chunks of the country.
In turn this means that the cost of building has spiralled. Because of housing costs.
Building a limited number of properties and trying to market them at an artificially low price wont fix the problem.
We have 8 million fewer properties than France, and a similar population.
The shocking revelation that Green lobbyists and interest groups are not overly impressed with the measures expected from the govt. Top journalism, this.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
Quite a lot of older GenX people do care about the Millenials and Gen Z. Any decent parent does.
I know that - and so do many boomers and pre boomers (my surviving grandparents were born just before the baby boom and are very concerned for their grandkids and great grandkids). When I talk about generations I don't mean the individuals as much as I do the political culture of the time. The neoliberal turn that happened under the Boomer Generation - Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and now this - was all a slow rolling back of all the gains of the post war period their parents and grandparents had secured.
Did you live in the UK in the 1970s?
No - my dad was born in '69 and my mum was born in '74. In their mid-late 20s the three bedroom house they bought in Hertfordshire was £55k - the same house is now worth £350k. I also saw what my parents' individual income was at that time to get that mortgage - and it wasn't far from mine. My mum didn't even go to uni (if you do some maths you'd notice she had me in her teens).
Do you agree that house prices have risen so much because the population has increased so much over the last 25 years?
No. House prices have risen because they have become the sole asset that earlier generations were allowed to keep during the slashing and burning of the public assets, the social safety nets, and worker wage growth. So housing prices had to inflate otherwise people would have realised they were getting poorer over the last 30 years. Selling council houses and refusing to build replacements meant cheap and stable renting situations became harder to find, leading to rents being able to increase as landlords had no competition. Affordable housing stopped being built in favour of big family homes that could be sold at a premium to rich people or more landlords. If we had built a council house for every one sold through right to buy, the number of people wouldn't really matter than much.
I don’t think that makes sense. Assuming a stable population, each household needs exactly one house. If household x buys their council house, that is one fewer rental house available but also one household fewer that needs a rental house, because that house is now privately owned by household x. I don’t disagree that more investment in housing was needed – but ONLY because the population is NOT stable – i.e. it has increased. From a pure supply and demand perspective, what was needed was housing (not specifically council housing, though it could have been – each tenure has its strengths and weaknesses) – because demand was increasing.
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
Don’t see why that would matter. The program wasn’t advice on how to enjoy drugs, but how to deal with the problem of people taking them
So you'd have a non-driver fronting a programme on TWOC-ing? If you have a programme about taking drugs, who would you best have fronting it - Russell Brand or Peter Hitchens? Perhaps Brand would be even more the obvious choice today.
I don’t know what TWOC-ing is, but on the second point, I don’t see why having taken drugs should be an advantage in making policy or tv programmes about the dangers of taking them.
This announcement by Sunak is a complete waste of time. He is struggling to find something, anything, that might change the narrative. He may persuade a few people to switch their votes but it will not make a difference. At the next GE the Tories will lose, Labour will take power and go back to the old plans. All it does is reveal Sunak's desperation.
I know I should be more concerned by the policy, etc, but I'm fixated by this idea of a government holding an emergency cabinet meeting to make a change to its own policy, that has been government policy for more than three years and relates to deadlines more than six years in the future.
What part of this is an emergency that cannot wait until the next scheduled cabinet meeting?
Leave aside all the questions about the change in policy. This alone is ridiculous. This is a pathetic absurdity. Do they really think that they will impress people with an emergency cabinet meeting?
It's childish in the extreme. They deserve to be laughed at every time they show their faces for such a stunt.
This was the main takeaway for me. If it is true that he has done a major policy reversal merely to not be upstaged by his predecessor then he is too silly for the job.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
The fact that our biggest problem is the one area we are most illiberal should show you the strength of liberalism and why we should liberalise our illiberal housing market.
Houses shouldn't be an asset for wealth.
Houses should be a cost for having a roof over your head and good quality of life.
Absolutely burn it down. Let people who want assets invest in other things, like invest businesses that can make a positive return.
They can hold onto houses if they please, no harm in that, so long as competition means nobody is obliged to let those houses due to a lack of an alternative. If all they hold is empty premises, lets see how long those assets remain valuable to them.
That the one area where most people have been able to retain any wealth is the one area that hasn't been hacked to shreds should show you that hacking things to shred is bad! Do house prices need to deflate - absolutely. But the fact is that if they did by just unleashing the market you'd fuck over everyone. Many pensioners only have their house to leverage for the cost of their care as they age, and many people in their 50s and 60s only have their parents houses to inherit for any intergenerational wealth accumulation. Many people in their 30s and 40s would suddenly be in negative equity and completely fucked. The decline of the housing market must be met with policies that would help avert all those negative impacts for normal people, not drown them all in one go as the dam is removed.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
Are you a neoliberal when it comes to migration, or do you believe in controls?
I mean, neoliberal immigration policy of porous borders is not about internationalism or benefiting humans from other countries - it's about allowing cheap labour to move more freely with the added bonus of a constant threat that the state might deport you to prevent you from unionising and asking for higher wages. Countries and borders are fake, I'm for the free movement of all peoples.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
@148grss Feel free to ignore me but in my experience, this type of negative attitude in your 30s will ruin your life. I've got quite a few friends who think like this and a decade or so on they have just been left behind, they don't own property, don't get married/have long term relationships, no kids etc. They are going nowhere. By contrast I know people in their early 30's who already have children and own property despite having low wages (below minimum wage) and no parental support. I know lots of people in my own industry who are earning over £80k by their late 20's/early 30's, so same age as you. Also people who have just stuck at something and worked hard for 6/7 years, earning respectably, getting promotions, owning their own house etc. There is nearly always a way. It isn't particularly fair, like life itself, but beyond a point it just looks like a case of winners v losers.
This isn't just the ramblings of a depressive (although I am one) - it is the economic data. Millennials are earning less than previous generations at the same age. Adult children living with parents is up almost 15% between 2011 and 2021. If you care about marriages (I don't, but conservatives claim to) - there's been a 10% drop in 25 - 29 age bracket over the same time. Some conservatives here also complain about the lowering birth rate, happening predominantly amongst younger adults. Why? Because we can't afford to. Rents are high and wages are stagnant. Cost of living is increasing.
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
This is an area where independent thinking people from left to right can agree.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
Our solutions just differ. Right wingers want to do neoliberalism max and unleash the market, despite the fact that that is what got us here, and left wingers want the kind of New Deal policies and social safety nets that actually worked. Like, I'm not against house building - but no private house should be built to be sold by a private developer, they should all be public housing to bring down the costs for everyone. I'm not against aspiration - but a baseline of living standards has to be met for people to be able to aspire and not just fight to survive. And that should be met by the whole of society - and those with the broadest shoulder should carry the heaviest load.
Neoliberalism isn't what got us here.
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
The neoliberal economic consensus demands that houses be commodified and therefore house prices must stay artificially high, because it was the only asset people could get at the time the slashing and burning of public infrastructure started. The reason no government can allow the housing market to go into negative equity is because that is the only increase in wealth most people have seen in the last 30 years. If that disappeared it would be clear that the stagnant wages of the last 30 years giving massive profits to corporations was hidden by the economic mirage that is the housing market.
It is illiberalism that keeps prices high.
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
So you want a further bonfire of regulations and allow the market to sort it out. That is the neoliberal model. The reason it wasn't applied to housing was precisely because it was the only asset that they were planning to leave people to give them wealth accumulation whilst they burnt down all the other pathways to that down. And because it is the only thing left standing, those who still believe in neoliberalism want to burn it down too.
The fact that our biggest problem is the one area we are most illiberal should show you the strength of liberalism and why we should liberalise our illiberal housing market.
Houses shouldn't be an asset for wealth.
Houses should be a cost for having a roof over your head and good quality of life.
Absolutely burn it down. Let people who want assets invest in other things, like invest businesses that can make a positive return.
They can hold onto houses if they please, no harm in that, so long as competition means nobody is obliged to let those houses due to a lack of an alternative. If all they hold is empty premises, lets see how long those assets remain valuable to them.
That the one area where most people have been able to retain any wealth is the one area that hasn't been hacked to shreds should show you that hacking things to shred is bad! Do house prices need to deflate - absolutely. But the fact is that if they did by just unleashing the market you'd fuck over everyone. Many pensioners only have their house to leverage for the cost of their care as they age, and many people in their 50s and 60s only have their parents houses to inherit for any intergenerational wealth accumulation. Many people in their 30s and 40s would suddenly be in negative equity and completely fucked. The decline of the housing market must be met with policies that would help avert all those negative impacts for normal people, not drown them all in one go as the dam is removed.
To actually drop house prices simply would require building on a scale that is... Peruvian.
In Peru, outside the capital, you buy some land. Then you build on it. The idea that someone might try and stop you is considered insane. Yes, there are building regs and some planning stuff. Mostly ignored.
We are not going to get there, in the UK.
If we double property construction, we *might* contain prices to above inflation (long term) and below wages.
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
Don’t see why that would matter. The program wasn’t advice on how to enjoy drugs, but how to deal with the problem of people taking them
So you'd have a non-driver fronting a programme on TWOC-ing? If you have a programme about taking drugs, who would you best have fronting it - Russell Brand or Peter Hitchens? Perhaps Brand would be even more the obvious choice today.
I don’t know what TWOC-ing is, but on the second point, I don’t see why having taken drugs should be an advantage in making policy or tv programmes about the dangers of taking them.
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
"four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them."
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
Don’t see why that would matter. The program wasn’t advice on how to enjoy drugs, but how to deal with the problem of people taking them
So you'd have a non-driver fronting a programme on TWOC-ing? If you have a programme about taking drugs, who would you best have fronting it - Russell Brand or Peter Hitchens? Perhaps Brand would be even more the obvious choice today.
I don’t know what TWOC-ing is, but on the second point, I don’t see why having taken drugs should be an advantage in making policy or tv programmes about the dangers of taking them.
Taking Without Consent. Nicking cars.
I don’t see why you’d need to be able to drive to make a programme about why it’s wrong to steal cars
Actually I think that spectator writer nailed it in this article...
"French food is the worst in the world: The country’s restaurants have become museums", by Sean Thomas, 15 September 2023, from the Spectator website, see Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/yYrVq
For some unaccountable reason my partner bought the Spectator at the airport before our trip to Berlin. What a rag, designed solely to batter/massage the reactionary clitoris. The recurrence of Rod Liddle wasn't even the worst thing about it.
Quite brilliant . The phrase “ reactionary clitoris “ should go down in the annals of PB history .
Comments
What, if anything, is improving? Healthcare isn't. Wages aren't. Environment - not so much. Any time younger people speak out they get told they're entitled and woke and should sit down and shut up whilst the older generations who benefited from government investment in university, housing, NHS, infrastructure, a social safety net all pull up the ladder behind them.
I don't think for one that Sunak deserves credit at all for the rate of inflation falling, but for Sunak he should be claiming it nonetheless and that should be the news today and instead its chaos that makes Ed Miliband look the the font of serenity.
And the current SCOTUS want to abandon that.
https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/michigan-v-environmental-protection-agency/
https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/sackett-v-epa-sackett-ii/
You are also aware that CO2 emissions and clean air and water are, in fact, separate things?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12533021/PETER-HITCHENS-Trying-argument-Russell-Brand-like-playing-chess-squirrel-given-place-national-debate.html
'I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me.'
It’ll never be a 12.8mm.
For me the Conservatives have always been the party of aspiration, that is the reason I supported them.
Pulling up the ladder, saying STFU to concerns, tilting the playing field so that no houses are built and people are forced to rent for decades and so on and so forth goes against aspiration.
If the Tories don't believe in aspiration, and you're not a self-centred early 1800s style individual who only cares about what they already have or might inherit rather than work for, then what purpose do Sunak's Tories provide?
The problems seen by the younger generations, are almost all down to the cost of housing not keeping up with the increase in population. The only way out is to build millions of houses as quickly as possible, and for the younger generation to promise to vote against any politician who wants to get in the way of building more houses.
The neoliberal turn was positive and led to an all-time high in homeownership and aspiration. The reforms in the 1980s followed by the 1990s with low house prices etc enabled more than ever before, or ever since, to get a home of their own. Young people had opportunities never before seen.
The problem is they've not been seen again since. In the 1990s you could buy a house with a 10% deposit for 0.25x your annual income since houses were 2.5x incomes (often lower, that was an average). Nowadays you're expected to be able to get 0.7x your annual income as a deposit, while paying rents for decades and the prices ever escalating. And people who were incredibly fortunate to grow up in the past stick their heads in the sand and insist how difficult the past was when the facts show the polar opposite.
Aspiration should suit all generations. We need to return to the neoliberal aspirations of the 1980s and 1990s. The problem was that having got people into a home of their own in the 1980s and 1990s, the 2000s saw "buy to let" as the next step of progress rather than a heinous reversion of the rights of the young to be able to expect to buy to live.
Yes, it can happen to anyone. I always used to think these kinds of conspiracies were rare and you had to be either careless or unlucky to be caught up in them, but I am less sure now.
The PO Scandal is alarming because these were perfectly ordinary, law-abiding employees crushed by an institution that they trusted, and for no better reason than that numerous executives and consultants wished to cover their arses.
In the past five years I have twice personally experienced lying by State institutions we ought to be able to rely on - first HMRC (I got an apology and small amount of damages), and then the Police (still under enquiry and it's probably not going anywhere but it should never have happened in the first place.) Neither matter was particulalrly serious but the striking thing was that in both instances Officers were prepared to lie, in written evidence, purely as a matter of their convenience.
I'm bloody-minded enough to make a stand. My advice to you all is be bloody minded. And don't trust these guys. Carry recording equipment and never be interviewed alone, without legal support or an independent witness.
I bet most of these poor sods who trusted the PO wish they hadn't done so,
Illiberal planning restrictions and putting barriers up prevent housing construction from matching or better exceeding population growth is what got us here.
Other countries have shown the solution. Liberalise planning, let people build whatever they want without asking society or neighbours for permission first just get going on building so long as you follow building codes and regulations.
Do that and houses will be affordable and young generations will have the same opportunities their elders had.
Of course it will also lead to massive negative equity and people's buy to let investments will turn out to be worthless. That's a lesser problem than people not being able to buy in the first place to live though.
Wagner convoy in Sudan taken out by a group believed to be Ukranian special forces.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/20/ukrainian-special-services-drone-strikes-wagner-sudan/
I feel really pissed off that the BBC never commissioned me to make a programme on drugs. The fact that I have never taken them - and have no insights to share on taking them - should not have stopped me from being the voice of drug-taking in the modern era....
House prices have risen so much because restrictions on developments have meant housing construction hasn't kept pace.
Population growth has happened for centuries, that's not a problem so long as construction keeps pace and there's no reason why it shouldn't have besides our broken planning system and NIMBYism.
Any cost savings for end users from running EVs are pretty much all tax arbitrarge rather than actual savings. (Before anyone brings up servicing, my car is serviced more frequently than it's manufacturers schedule - it's dead easy, I do it every 10k miles, it takes 15 minutes and the consumables cost about £25, so about 0.25p/mile).
Illiberalism means that you can't build a home without asking permission first, and you won't get permission for years or decades because people want to keep their asset prices high.
Go to a liberal system, abolish the need to ask for permission, just let people get the bulldozers or whatever in on their own timescale with their neighbours not being asked first and prices would collapse.
Which is why people who want artificially high prices are terrified of liberalism.
Laters PB.
If we had a liberal system then anyone could build what they want and there'd be competition.
If you own a shitbox you want to let out for a fortune you'll suddenly find yourself holding a useless bit of unoccupied land and building because nobody would rent from you when they could rent from a better competitor, or better yet buy.
Don't confuse what we have with liberalism, or neoliberalism. What we have is the polar opposite of a liberal system.
We, along with much of the western world, are going through a demographic transition from an age-sex diagram shaped like a pyramid to one shaped like an exotic skyscraper with a twiddly bit on the top to, potentially, one shaped like the Wyrmberg (the upside down mountain from Terry Pratchett's first Discworld book). This is painfully, preposterously expensive, particularly when 60 years ago policy decisions like pensions were made on the assumption that the pyramid would continue indefinitely.
You have to get out of the ponzi scheme at some point, but it is seldom pleasant to do so.
Our grandson and his wife have, not long ago, given us what we hope will be first of several great-grandchildren. Both are teachers, both are working full time. The baby spends 3days a week with child-minders and the rest of the time with his grandparents. They need the two salaries, over and above the costs of childcare.
Houses shouldn't be an asset for wealth.
Houses should be a cost for having a roof over your head and good quality of life.
Absolutely burn it down. Let people who want assets invest in other things, like invest businesses that can make a positive return.
They can hold onto houses if they please, no harm in that, so long as competition means nobody is obliged to let those houses due to a lack of an alternative. If all they hold is empty premises, lets see how long those assets remain valuable to them.
This has resulted in a price spiral that means that nothing is affordable, in large chunks of the country.
In turn this means that the cost of building has spiralled. Because of housing costs.
Building a limited number of properties and trying to market them at an artificially low price wont fix the problem.
We have 8 million fewer properties than France, and a similar population.
I don’t disagree that more investment in housing was needed – but ONLY because the population is NOT stable – i.e. it has increased. From a pure supply and demand perspective, what was needed was housing (not specifically council housing, though it could have been – each tenure has its strengths and weaknesses) – because demand was increasing.
The Wagner Group are still in mourning following the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
NEW THREAD
In Peru, outside the capital, you buy some land. Then you build on it. The idea that someone might try and stop you is considered insane. Yes, there are building regs and some planning stuff. Mostly ignored.
We are not going to get there, in the UK.
If we double property construction, we *might* contain prices to above inflation (long term) and below wages.