Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
Independents are the most sceptical group. I wouldn't have foreseen that.
Now this won't affect what happens on the ground in Israel (as Israel has plenty of munitions), but, it's a measure of how Israel has dropped the ball in terms of US public opinion. Fifteen years ago, I suspect the numbers would have been 70:30 in favour of aid.
Netanyahu is poison. If there's a less attractive world politician I can't think who it is
Turns out that Cheezy Bro was born in Wisconsin. So he IS a Damned Yankee.
That plus fact he's being grilled to a rich golden brown by State of Georgia, vindicates the honor of the South.
AND get's YOU off the hook down at the rib shack.
You and your false allegations.
I'll sue YOU for defamation next
Can I cop a plea?
What's your offer, and what's your proffer?
(Learning some weird Usonian legal terms following these trials.)
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
I'm pretty sure it is generally understood that the current party leader is responsible for their party's performance in by-elections, surprised that cretin Peston needed a reminder.
You're not reading it properly. Mr Peston is obviously being ironic.
Yet another Voice of Reason from & for today's GOP
NYT live blog - Speaking to reporters on Friday after a campaign event in South Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida accused House Republicans of engaging in “palace intrigue” instead of “delivering results.”
“Look, I think it’s unfortunate that these guys can’t get their act together,” said Mr. DeSantis, a Republican running for president who once served in the House. “It’s like the gang that can’t shoot straight. They’ve been running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It’s not inspiring confidence. There’s a lot of theater.”
SSI - Given recent Anti-Semite Octopus scandal (also Aryan Nations White Elephant) shocked and appalled that RDS has gone from badmouthing beloved Mickey Mouse, to defaming innocent headless chickens.
Probably because it ain't exactly a mystery, despite the best frothings of the antivax idiot crowd.
Excess deaths correlate strongly with covid outbreaks. And not at all with vaccinations. It doesn't mean we're necessarily missing a bunch of covid deaths (although that's possible); ambulance delays and delays in getting treated all increase in those times, and that does, we know, correlate with worse outcomes and higher deaths.
It's not rocket science. Or evul vaccines, regardless of what that twat wants to convey. That most outlets aren't broadcasting him spouting the latest scientifically and logically illiterate crap he's swallowed from the conspiracy-mongers isn't a real shock. Although there are a handful of websites that will breathlessly repeat it, I guess.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Piss easy to do.
The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.
Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.
The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.
In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000
£50,000 land with services. £250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm £50,000 developer profit (16.5%)
I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.
In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up
Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.
Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.
I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.
Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.
60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.
So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.
If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.
I don't see how you can have a 60 sq meters semi detached house. That's only about 20-25 sq meters of usable space per floor.
Now, 60 sq meters is fine for an apartment/flat, but there you don't lose space to stairs.
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
I'm pretty sure it is generally understood that the current party leader is responsible for their party's performance in by-elections, surprised that cretin Peston needed a reminder.
You're not reading it properly. Mr Peston is obviously being ironic.
Isn't 'obvious irony' somewhat oxymoronic?
Who knows? I'd almost believe anything of posters on the internet.
Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...
Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".
No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.
I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.
My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.
The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.
If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.
Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.
There is a common feeling of despair among habitual Conservative voters despite 13 years in government. This is curious but I *think* that these voters feel that although their party has long been in government it has not been in power. If that makes any sense?
Yes, it makes perfect sense. I see this as very simple, the Conservative Party is an organisation with a settled right wing view, but a good proportion of its parliamentarians are convinced corporatist centrists who want to expand the power of the state and of supranational institutions. A smaller band are the keepers of the Tory flame, and the majority are in the middle and are a bunch of jellies who will go where the wind (and personal advancement) take them.
A basic, right leaning, responsible Government would do the job here. Even in the space of a year I think the country could be set on the right track. I'm also not looking for us to deliberately sass the Americans or invade France, or sack all of the Civil Service - politics is the art of the possible, and Britain/England has always been confined by internal and external factors, it was the same in Elizabeth I's day. But this bunch aren't negotiating the obstacles, they're simple sellouts. They are full speed ahead to IMF town. And full speed ahead to crashing Tory defeat - any Tory MP with a survival instinct should be dusting down their typewriter.
To do what? There is little chance that a letter to get rid of Rishi is going to give them a leader more likely to help them save their seat - the only thing it would do is shift the party even further into it's current right-wing UKIP tendency.
That's a given anyway. Changing leader would be a last roll of the dice. No point in not trying it really.
Not that I have a clue who they could pick.
It would end up with tory party members picking the most insane option while the rest of the country thinks - let's do everything we can to ensure this bunch of incompetents are never close to power again...
The NZ fella has brought a big bit of wood on to the pitch with him. I enjoy the little dances that the South Pacific nations do before their games, but I don't really see why the other side ahould have to stand and watch. I quite liked David Campese's approach of practicing his kicking until they'd got it over with. He got into trouble for 'not respecting the haka'. But I don't think it's terribly respectful to do a little war dance at your opponenta before you start.
I seem to recall some brouhaha when an opposing team stood right up close to the halfway line so by the end of the festivities they were practically face to face with the All Blacks, glaring at them, as though that were disrespectful to so.
Seems to me if they are doing it then reacting in some way - either with deliberate non-reaction or intense reaction - rather than just observing passively is more respectful. If they're not supposed to do anything in response then why not do it before the opponent is even on the field?
How utterly hysterical if this ends up as rugby World Cup final between England and Argentina
I think the chances of this are 0.09% but still
It would turn rugby fans inside out about how to still claim England are shit.
Would be like strapping a bit of buttered toast onto the back of a cat where the rule of buttered toast landing face down meets the law of cats always landing on their feet and the cat-toast spins forever as the universe can’t quite work out what has happened.
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Housing. Ideally high density transit oriented new towns in beautiful Georgian styles. But just building enough housing would be a start. And infrastructure. High speed rail back on the menu. And low sped rail. And BRT.
The NZ fella has brought a big bit of wood on to the pitch with him. I enjoy the little dances that the South Pacific nations do before their games, but I don't really see why the other side ahould have to stand and watch. I quite liked David Campese's approach of practicing his kicking until they'd got it over with. He got into trouble for 'not respecting the haka'. But I don't think it's terribly respectful to do a little war dance at your opponenta before you start.
I seem to recall some brouhaha when an opposing team stood right up close to the halfway line so by the end of the festivities they were practically face to face with the All Blacks, glaring at them, as though that were disrespectful to so.
Seems to me if they are doing it then reacting in some way - either with deliberate non-reaction or intense reaction - rather than just observing passively is more respectful. If they're not supposed to do anything in response then why not do it before the opponent is even on the field?
Did that not start with England at World Cup 1995 in SA - the bald one standing closeup and staring?
The NZ fella has brought a big bit of wood on to the pitch with him. I enjoy the little dances that the South Pacific nations do before their games, but I don't really see why the other side ahould have to stand and watch. I quite liked David Campese's approach of practicing his kicking until they'd got it over with. He got into trouble for 'not respecting the haka'. But I don't think it's terribly respectful to do a little war dance at your opponenta before you start.
I seem to recall some brouhaha when an opposing team stood right up close to the halfway line so by the end of the festivities they were practically face to face with the All Blacks, glaring at them, as though that were disrespectful to so.
Seems to me if they are doing it then reacting in some way - either with deliberate non-reaction or intense reaction - rather than just observing passively is more respectful. If they're not supposed to do anything in response then why not do it before the opponent is even on the field?
Did that not start with England at World Cup 1995 in SA - the bald one standing closeup and staring?
I think the all blacks are quite happy that it’s a challenge by them and so have no issue being challenged back in whatever way the opposition feel they want to. I think it was England with Cockerill who got right up in their faces and the rugby world clutched their pearls but the kiwis were good with it.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...
Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".
No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.
I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.
My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.
The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.
If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.
Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.
There is a common feeling of despair among habitual Conservative voters despite 13 years in government. This is curious but I *think* that these voters feel that although their party has long been in government it has not been in power. If that makes any sense?
Yes, it makes perfect sense. I see this as very simple, the Conservative Party is an organisation with a settled right wing view, but a good proportion of its parliamentarians are convinced corporatist centrists who want to expand the power of the state and of supranational institutions. A smaller band are the keepers of the Tory flame, and the majority are in the middle and are a bunch of jellies who will go where the wind (and personal advancement) take them.
A basic, right leaning, responsible Government would do the job here. Even in the space of a year I think the country could be set on the right track. I'm also not looking for us to deliberately sass the Americans or invade France, or sack all of the Civil Service - politics is the art of the possible, and Britain/England has always been confined by internal and external factors, it was the same in Elizabeth I's day. But this bunch aren't negotiating the obstacles, they're simple sellouts. They are full speed ahead to IMF town. And full speed ahead to crashing Tory defeat - any Tory MP with a survival instinct should be dusting down their typewriter.
To do what? There is little chance that a letter to get rid of Rishi is going to give them a leader more likely to help them save their seat - the only thing it would do is shift the party even further into it's current right-wing UKIP tendency.
That's a given anyway. Changing leader would be a last roll of the dice. No point in not trying it really.
Not that I have a clue who they could pick.
It would end up with tory party members picking the most insane option while the rest of the country thinks - let's do everything we can to ensure this bunch of incompetents are never close to power again...
And in Georgia, Cheesboro has now also flipped and pled guilty.
That means three of Trump's co-defendants have now pled guilty and will testify against him. Each one that flips increases the pressure on the remaining ones to make a deal rather than risk jail time.
Breaking rocks in the hot sun Trump fought the law and the law won Trump fought the law and the ... law won
If we are doing Clash/Trump songs I bet the Donald is praying “Rudie can’t fail”.
One thing I like about NZ is that they still play in proper shirts with collars.
So do Argentina
Ha, yes, fair point Scott. The same thought just occurred to me. I guess I just expect NZ to be right at the forefront of every new idea in rugby,and I'm pleased that in this respect at least, they're conservative. NZ collars are quite 2003,which I actually prefer to the 1980s collars the Argentines are sporting.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Cancelling devolution might be good for the lulz.
House of Lords has already been moved to a second parliament issue. The only thing Labour plan to do in the first parliament is to remove the hereditary peers which is utterly pointless because they are now the clueful ones given how they are now appointed..
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
It's a very weird approach. It's a complex mix, and current leadership has to take blame, but you cannot pretend it happened in a vacuum or disavow the person you chose to run things and did what you told them to do. They could argue he's ruined things since, but you can't simultaneously blame him for the actions at Boris's direction as PM, it's not credible he was running his own show the whole time.
Truss has more of a case, since she was there so briefly - her impact is about reputation trashing, but the Sunak mission was to overcome that.
The double-whammy of Partygate and the Truss mini-budget have made things near-irrecoverable for Rishi.
The "friends" of BJ and LT have it in for Sunak because (a) he resigned from the cabinet and helped to precipate Boris's exit, and, (b) he explicitly warned against Truss's economic proposals. The fact that he was clearly right in both instancesl only serves to enrage the rightwing factionalists in the party.QED.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
He might try that but it would produce a rare Tory and LD southern counties MPs alliance against again
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
He might try that but it would produce a rare Tory and LD southern counties MPs alliance against again
With a massive majority though it'll be an impotent alliance.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
first time round I was firmly against ID cards. Having spent years working round finance (and similar) in Europe I've changed my viewpoint - an ID card has plenty of advantages especially in areas like right to work where it's incredibly hard to check anyone who hasn't got a passport...
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
He might try that but it would produce a rare Tory and LD southern counties MPs alliance against again
With a massive majority though it'll be an impotent alliance.
Corbyn and McDonnell have also opposed building on the greenbelt, so again he might face some opposition from the left of the party too along with the Greens
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
first time round I was firmly against ID cards. Having spent years working round finance (and similar) in Europe I've changed my viewpoint - an ID card has plenty of advantages especially in areas like right to work where it's incredibly hard to check anyone who hasn't got a passport...
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
You would note that we are talking about NHS and welfare state reform under a Labour Government because 13 years and 4 different Tory Governments have been utterly unable to fix anything...
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
You would note that we are talking about NHS and welfare state reform under a Labour Government because 13 years and 4 different Tory Governments have been utterly unable to fix anything...
Not true, this government brought in Universal Credit and fully contributory JSA and also more private sector involvement in healthcare even beyond that Blair pushed
It's a shame for Sunak in a way. He has many qualities that other prime of my adult life have tended to lack. He'd be my pick of the 5 Tory PMs since 2010. None of the snide, casual arrogance of Cameron, the robotic indecision of May, the cakeism of Johnson, the madness of Truss. What can we commend him for?
Assertive without being jingoistic on foreign policy Hardworking Not trying to dismantle our institutions like several of his predecessors did Not power crazed (see above) Thinks properly about decisions Not a reactionary Doesn't suck up to the press Doesn't endlessly bash the BBC (see above)
We can commend him for continuing the decline and ushering in a new government, I suppose.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
If you’ve never seen it the evolution of the Hakka over time is interesting. Started as a bit of a half hearted joke, now it’s seen as deadly earnest. Was not always so.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
You would note that we are talking about NHS and welfare state reform under a Labour Government because 13 years and 4 different Tory Governments have been utterly unable to fix anything...
Not true, this government brought in Universal Credit and fully contributory JSA and also more private sector involvement in healthcare even beyond that Blair pushed
Did not. It was the Conservative-LD coalition. In other words, nothing at all in common with the current lot.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
Does anyone care about ID cards anymore, when we can all be so easily identified in multipke ways: CCTV survellaince, photo ID technology, smart phones however you like?
I used to be fiercely anti ID cards, but now I am increasingly Meh. I don't like them, but technology makes them a lot less objectionable. And they might help stem illegal migration, abuse of the NHS etc. I can see Starmer doing it
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
You would note that we are talking about NHS and welfare state reform under a Labour Government because 13 years and 4 different Tory Governments have been utterly unable to fix anything...
Not true, this government brought in Universal Credit and fully contributory JSA and also more private sector involvement in healthcare even beyond that Blair pushed
Did not. It was the Conservative-LD coalition. In other words, nothing at all in common with the current lot.
IDS was the Minister who pushed it through, ironically IDS therefore has one of the biggest legacies of any Tory Cabinet Minister during the past 13 years
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
How come you are against targeting BTL landlords and STLs then?
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
You would note that we are talking about NHS and welfare state reform under a Labour Government because 13 years and 4 different Tory Governments have been utterly unable to fix anything...
Not true, this government brought in Universal Credit and fully contributory JSA and also more private sector involvement in healthcare even beyond that Blair pushed
We are 13 years into this Government and Universal Credit hasn't been fully implemented (I worked on it back in 2013).
Fully contributory JSA equally hasn't made much difference..
Most Cons apparent reaction to two of the worst BE kickings in history - 'we need to keep doing exactly what we were doing but do more of it and louder.'
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
Or the team just doing Kate Bush’s dance from the Wuthering Heights video. The opposition’s brains would be scrambled. Joe Marler channeling his inner heathcliff.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
I actually think five minutes of Morris dancing followed by downing a tankard of nut brown ale is actually pretty sinister. Maybe get a maypole involved for the big occasions.
Is it just me, or is the haka actually quite sh1t in itself? It's not intimidating in the slightest - it's some nice boys from Auckland sticking their tongues out a bit.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
Does anyone care about ID cards anymore, when we can all be so easily identified in multipke ways: CCTV survellaince, photo ID technology, smart phones however you like?
I used to be fiercely anti ID cards, but now I am increasingly Meh. I don't like them, but technology makes them a lot less objectionable. And they might help stem illegal migration, abuse of the NHS etc. I can see Starmer doing it
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
Quite right too. Always enjoyed seeing it when drinking real ale down south.
The late Bill Tidy's Cloggies offer a perhaps even better model.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
How come you are against targeting BTL landlords and STLs then?
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
Build millions more houses and BTL and STL are not an issue.
If someone doesn't want to let off a private landlord, then they can ignore the landlord and buy a home of their own instead. Its only our shortage of supply that is creating issues where people are forced to let off the BTL landlord as there's no alternatives.
Its tragic that the party of Thatcher has turned into one with people like Nigel who want to have property as a restricted "commodity" that can't be built and instead should be an income stream as others are denied the opportunity to have a property of their own. The complete opposite vision of what Thatcher believed in and made the Tories great.
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property. Margaret Thatcher
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
I actually think five minutes of Morris dancing followed by downing a tankard of nut brown ale is actually pretty sinister. Maybe get a maypole involved for the big occasions.
Is it just me, or is the haka actually quite sh1t in itself? It's not intimidating in the slightest - it's some nice boys from Auckland sticking their tongues out a bit.
This is what the Hakka was until the pros got involved.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
He won't do either 1 or 2 as the Labour left wouldn't let him (and probably more than 100 would vote against) so he could only get them through with Tory votes. In terms of 2 the most he would do is have a more contributory element.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
You would note that we are talking about NHS and welfare state reform under a Labour Government because 13 years and 4 different Tory Governments have been utterly unable to fix anything...
Not true, this government brought in Universal Credit and fully contributory JSA and also more private sector involvement in healthcare even beyond that Blair pushed
Did not. It was the Conservative-LD coalition. In other words, nothing at all in common with the current lot.
IDS was the Minister who pushed it through, ironically IDS therefore has one of the biggest legacies of any Tory Cabinet Minister during the past 13 years
But that is not "this government". It's like you claiming that orang-utans eat kippers and when I point out that this is nonsense you go off and say that cormorants eat fish.
Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...
Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".
No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.
I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.
My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.
The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.
If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.
Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.
There is a common feeling of despair among habitual Conservative voters despite 13 years in government. This is curious but I *think* that these voters feel that although their party has long been in government it has not been in power. If that makes any sense?
Yes, it makes perfect sense. I see this as very simple, the Conservative Party is an organisation with a settled right wing view, but a good proportion of its parliamentarians are convinced corporatist centrists who want to expand the power of the state and of supranational institutions. A smaller band are the keepers of the Tory flame, and the majority are in the middle and are a bunch of jellies who will go where the wind (and personal advancement) take them.
A basic, right leaning, responsible Government would do the job here. Even in the space of a year I think the country could be set on the right track. I'm also not looking for us to deliberately sass the Americans or invade France, or sack all of the Civil Service - politics is the art of the possible, and Britain/England has always been confined by internal and external factors, it was the same in Elizabeth I's day. But this bunch aren't negotiating the obstacles, they're simple sellouts. They are full speed ahead to IMF town. And full speed ahead to crashing Tory defeat - any Tory MP with a survival instinct should be dusting down their typewriter.
To do what? There is little chance that a letter to get rid of Rishi is going to give them a leader more likely to help them save their seat - the only thing it would do is shift the party even further into it's current right-wing UKIP tendency.
That's a given anyway. Changing leader would be a last roll of the dice. No point in not trying it really.
Not that I have a clue who they could pick.
It would end up with tory party members picking the most insane option while the rest of the country thinks - let's do everything we can to ensure this bunch of incompetents are never close to power again...
That's what they think now. Nothing to lose.
Unless they know something about the end of the world that makes Greta Thunburg look like a crazed optimist, there's always something to lose. Even if 2024/5 is a goner, 2028/9 isn't. Not quite.
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
It's a very weird approach. It's a complex mix, and current leadership has to take blame, but you cannot pretend it happened in a vacuum or disavow the person you chose to run things and did what you told them to do. They could argue he's ruined things since, but you can't simultaneously blame him for the actions at Boris's direction as PM, it's not credible he was running his own show the whole time.
Truss has more of a case, since she was there so briefly - her impact is about reputation trashing, but the Sunak mission was to overcome that.
The double-whammy of Partygate and the Truss mini-budget have made things near-irrecoverable for Rishi.
The "friends" of BJ and LT have it in for Sunak because (a) he resigned from the cabinet and helped to precipate Boris's exit, and, (b) he explicitly warned against Truss's economic proposals. The fact that he was clearly right in both instancesl only serves to enrage the rightwing factionalists in the party.QED.
In the case of Boris, Sunak's actions lead to the defenestration of a leader facing a polling deficit of 3-4 points and is now a leader with a polling deficit of 20 points.
In the case of Truss, Sunak toppled a leader who had let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.63%, (though they had risen more during his own time as Chancellor) and replaced her with himself, who has let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.85% and rising, a 25 year high and the highest in the G7. And unlike the possible rewards of 'Trussonomics' in terms of growth, the stagnation of 'Rishinomics' offers no delayed benefit, reprieve, or hope.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Piss easy to do.
The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.
Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.
The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.
In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000
£50,000 land with services. £250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm £50,000 developer profit (16.5%)
I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.
In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up
Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.
Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.
I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.
Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.
60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.
So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.
If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.
I don't see how you can have a 60 sq meters semi detached house. That's only about 20-25 sq meters of usable space per floor.
Now, 60 sq meters is fine for an apartment/flat, but there you don't lose space to stairs.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
Does anyone care about ID cards anymore, when we can all be so easily identified in multipke ways: CCTV survellaince, photo ID technology, smart phones however you like?
I used to be fiercely anti ID cards, but now I am increasingly Meh. I don't like them, but technology makes them a lot less objectionable. And they might help stem illegal migration, abuse of the NHS etc. I can see Starmer doing it
Well I'm the same. But basically because it feels like such a small battle nowadays compared to all the other ones we're losing it's hard to care.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
Or the team just doing Kate Bush’s dance from the Wuthering Heights video. The opposition’s brains would be scrambled. Joe Marler channeling his inner heathcliff.
If you've never seen the various mass world championships of Wuthering Heights - let me introduce you :
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
It's a very weird approach. It's a complex mix, and current leadership has to take blame, but you cannot pretend it happened in a vacuum or disavow the person you chose to run things and did what you told them to do. They could argue he's ruined things since, but you can't simultaneously blame him for the actions at Boris's direction as PM, it's not credible he was running his own show the whole time.
Truss has more of a case, since she was there so briefly - her impact is about reputation trashing, but the Sunak mission was to overcome that.
The double-whammy of Partygate and the Truss mini-budget have made things near-irrecoverable for Rishi.
The "friends" of BJ and LT have it in for Sunak because (a) he resigned from the cabinet and helped to precipate Boris's exit, and, (b) he explicitly warned against Truss's economic proposals. The fact that he was clearly right in both instancesl only serves to enrage the rightwing factionalists in the party.QED.
In the case of Boris, Sunak's actions lead to the defenestration of a leader facing a polling deficit of 3-4 points and is now a leader with a polling deficit of 20 points.
In the case of Truss, Sunak toppled a leader who had let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.63%, (though they had risen more during his own time as Chancellor) and replaced her with himself, who has let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.85% and rising, a 25 year high and the highest in the G7. And unlike the possible rewards of 'Trussonomics' in terms of growth, the stagnation of 'Rishinomics' offers no delayed benefit, reprieve, or hope.
I want a capital-earning democracy. Every man and woman a capitalist. Housing is the start. If you're a man or woman of property, you've got something. So every man a capitalist, and every man a man of property.
Couldn't agree with this more, but apparently to the likes of Nigel, this is socialism.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
If you’ve never seen it the evolution of the Hakka over time is interesting. Started as a bit of a half hearted joke, now it’s seen as deadly earnest. Was not always so.
Was Howie Tamati. Captain of the Kiwi RL team, and an actual hereditary tribal chief of ceremonies who started it being done seriously. Sometime in the 80's.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
I actually think five minutes of Morris dancing followed by downing a tankard of nut brown ale is actually pretty sinister. Maybe get a maypole involved for the big occasions.
Is it just me, or is the haka actually quite sh1t in itself? It's not intimidating in the slightest - it's some nice boys from Auckland sticking their tongues out a bit.
This is what the Hakka was until the pros got involved.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
How come you are against targeting BTL landlords and STLs then?
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
Build millions more houses and BTL and STL are not an issue.
If someone doesn't want to let off a private landlord, then they can ignore the landlord and buy a home of their own instead. Its only our shortage of supply that is creating issues where people are forced to let off the BTL landlord as there's no alternatives.
Its tragic that the party of Thatcher has turned into one with people like Nigel who want to have property as a restricted "commodity" that can't be built and instead should be an income stream as others are denied the opportunity to have a property of their own. The complete opposite vision of what Thatcher believed in and made the Tories great.
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property. Margaret Thatcher
So you're not really against "property as a commodity" then. All bluster.
Friends of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson wish it to be known that LT and BJ are not responsible for the by-election defeats. The chaos of their premierships is apparently irrelevant. Instead it is Rishi Sunak’s stewardship of the economy for an almost unbroken four years which they say is to blame. I am not sure this reductionist argument helps them or their party. But they’d like you to know. 2:29 PM · Oct 20, 2023"
It's a very weird approach. It's a complex mix, and current leadership has to take blame, but you cannot pretend it happened in a vacuum or disavow the person you chose to run things and did what you told them to do. They could argue he's ruined things since, but you can't simultaneously blame him for the actions at Boris's direction as PM, it's not credible he was running his own show the whole time.
Truss has more of a case, since she was there so briefly - her impact is about reputation trashing, but the Sunak mission was to overcome that.
The double-whammy of Partygate and the Truss mini-budget have made things near-irrecoverable for Rishi.
The "friends" of BJ and LT have it in for Sunak because (a) he resigned from the cabinet and helped to precipate Boris's exit, and, (b) he explicitly warned against Truss's economic proposals. The fact that he was clearly right in both instancesl only serves to enrage the rightwing factionalists in the party.QED.
In the case of Boris, Sunak's actions lead to the defenestration of a leader facing a polling deficit of 3-4 points and is now a leader with a polling deficit of 20 points.
In the case of Truss, Sunak toppled a leader who had let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.63%, (though they had risen more during his own time as Chancellor) and replaced her with himself, who has let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.85% and rising, a 25 year high and the highest in the G7. And unlike the possible rewards of 'Trussonomics' in terms of growth, the stagnation of 'Rishinomics' offers no delayed benefit, reprieve, or hope.
Other than that, great point.
Quite right. Have faith. She’s coming home.
I must remember to go and put my money on the Lactuca sativa.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
first time round I was firmly against ID cards. Having spent years working round finance (and similar) in Europe I've changed my viewpoint - an ID card has plenty of advantages especially in areas like right to work where it's incredibly hard to check anyone who hasn't got a passport...
the issue isn’t an id card (so long as you aren’t obliged to carry it with you).
It’s the database of all your information the government wanted to build alongside it
Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...
Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".
No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.
I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.
My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.
The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.
If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.
Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.
There is a common feeling of despair among habitual Conservative voters despite 13 years in government. This is curious but I *think* that these voters feel that although their party has long been in government it has not been in power. If that makes any sense?
Yes, it makes perfect sense. I see this as very simple, the Conservative Party is an organisation with a settled right wing view, but a good proportion of its parliamentarians are convinced corporatist centrists who want to expand the power of the state and of supranational institutions. A smaller band are the keepers of the Tory flame, and the majority are in the middle and are a bunch of jellies who will go where the wind (and personal advancement) take them.
A basic, right leaning, responsible Government would do the job here. Even in the space of a year I think the country could be set on the right track. I'm also not looking for us to deliberately sass the Americans or invade France, or sack all of the Civil Service - politics is the art of the possible, and Britain/England has always been confined by internal and external factors, it was the same in Elizabeth I's day. But this bunch aren't negotiating the obstacles, they're simple sellouts. They are full speed ahead to IMF town. And full speed ahead to crashing Tory defeat - any Tory MP with a survival instinct should be dusting down their typewriter.
To do what? There is little chance that a letter to get rid of Rishi is going to give them a leader more likely to help them save their seat - the only thing it would do is shift the party even further into it's current right-wing UKIP tendency.
That's a given anyway. Changing leader would be a last roll of the dice. No point in not trying it really.
Not that I have a clue who they could pick.
It would end up with tory party members picking the most insane option while the rest of the country thinks - let's do everything we can to ensure this bunch of incompetents are never close to power again...
That's what they think now. Nothing to lose.
Unless they know something about the end of the world that makes Greta Thunburg look like a crazed optimist, there's always something to lose. Even if 2024/5 is a goner, 2028/9 isn't. Not quite.
Not yet, anyway.
I think it would be clearly understood that the winner would resign in the event of an election defeat and submit themselves for re-election if they felt justified in asking to continue. So I don't see anything to lose.
I said myself before Rishi's Net Zero announcements that we needed a new leader, because Rishi wouldn't be able to credibly sell a change in approach. That has proven true. Not only could he not credibly sell it, he couldn't stick to it or build policies around it - he reverted to farting on about maths and smoking. A new strategy needs a new leader to sell it. People have moved on from caring what Rishi says.
I think we need a new thread on what amazing/revolutionary things a Starmer government might do if he gets 100+ seat majority and almost guaranteed two terms
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS 2 making the welfare state contributory 3 ID cards? 4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
Concrete over the Green Belt.
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
Does anyone care about ID cards anymore, when we can all be so easily identified in multipke ways: CCTV survellaince, photo ID technology, smart phones however you like?
I used to be fiercely anti ID cards, but now I am increasingly Meh. I don't like them, but technology makes them a lot less objectionable. And they might help stem illegal migration, abuse of the NHS etc. I can see Starmer doing it
Well I'm the same. But basically because it feels like such a small battle nowadays compared to all the other ones we're losing it's hard to care.
Also, when we have people losing their votes and their ability to log onto the government website *because they lack photo driving licences* there is something very wrong with the current situation.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
think of the advantage we would have in the first 5-10 minutes as the opposition tried to stop laughing...
I actually think five minutes of Morris dancing followed by downing a tankard of nut brown ale is actually pretty sinister. Maybe get a maypole involved for the big occasions.
Is it just me, or is the haka actually quite sh1t in itself? It's not intimidating in the slightest - it's some nice boys from Auckland sticking their tongues out a bit.
This is what the Hakka was until the pros got involved.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
Or the team just doing Kate Bush’s dance from the Wuthering Heights video. The opposition’s brains would be scrambled. Joe Marler channeling his inner heathcliff.
If you've never seen the various mass world championships of Wuthering Heights - let me introduce you :
Jesus fucking Christ. Terrifying. Not least because I have an ex-girlfriend I can well imagine in that lot. If I were on a rugby pitch and faced that before kick off I would shit myself.
On war dances: In North Africa in WW II, an outfit from Oklahoma had enough Indians from one tribe to do a traditional war dance before a battle. Sadly, my source for that -- Pyle or Atkinson -- didn't follow up with any info on whether the dance was a success.
Although, as you know, the allies did eventually clear the Nazis out of North Africa. So, in some grand sense, it succeeded.
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
Quite right too. Always enjoyed seeing it when drinking real ale down south.
The late Bill Tidy's Cloggies offer a perhaps even better model.
There is a part of me that really wants the Terry Pratchett interpretation to be true. That what we know as the Morris is just the cover story for the Dark Morris, where at dead of night with blackened faces and camo, they discard the bells and roam the land with staffs, wreaking a horrid vengeance on miscreants. Basically the hard bastard version of Hot Fuzz.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
How come you are against targeting BTL landlords and STLs then?
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
Build millions more houses and BTL and STL are not an issue.
If someone doesn't want to let off a private landlord, then they can ignore the landlord and buy a home of their own instead. Its only our shortage of supply that is creating issues where people are forced to let off the BTL landlord as there's no alternatives.
Its tragic that the party of Thatcher has turned into one with people like Nigel who want to have property as a restricted "commodity" that can't be built and instead should be an income stream as others are denied the opportunity to have a property of their own. The complete opposite vision of what Thatcher believed in and made the Tories great.
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property. Margaret Thatcher
So you're not really against "property as a commodity" then. All bluster.
What are you talking about?
I have no objections to people running businesses from properties whatsoever, and there should be no shortage of available buildings to do so. Any profit or loss should be from how well the business is ran. That doesn't make property a commodity.
Commodities are fungible goods. A barrel of oil can be purchased or sold from one source, or from another. Property is not fungible, it is not a commodity.
On war dances: In North Africa in WW II, an outfit from Oklahoma had enough Indians from one tribe to do a traditional war dance before a battle. Sadly, my source for that -- Pyle or Atkinson -- didn't follow up with any info on whether the dance was a success.
Although, as you know, the allies did eventually clear the Nazis out of North Africa. So, in some grand sense, it succeeded.
Victory has a thousand dancers . . . while defeat is a wallflower . . .
NZ making this look a very easy game. This is not going to be close.
Why doesn't England do it's own version of the haka . . . by painting themselves blue and cavorting under burnt sacrifice, say lowest-scoring player?
Or just a bit of Morris dancing. Nothing like hanky waving, gently tapping small sticks together, and jingling bells on socks to strike sheer terror into the hearts of even the most powerful of foes.
Or the team just doing Kate Bush’s dance from the Wuthering Heights video. The opposition’s brains would be scrambled. Joe Marler channeling his inner heathcliff.
If you've never seen the various mass world championships of Wuthering Heights - let me introduce you :
Jesus fucking Christ. Terrifying. Not least because I have an ex-girlfriend I can well imagine in that lot. If I were on a rugby pitch and faced that before kick off I would shit myself.
Was she the one that was 107th in row 98? (The one with the mohawk?)
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
How come you are against targeting BTL landlords and STLs then?
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
Build millions more houses and BTL and STL are not an issue.
If someone doesn't want to let off a private landlord, then they can ignore the landlord and buy a home of their own instead. Its only our shortage of supply that is creating issues where people are forced to let off the BTL landlord as there's no alternatives.
Its tragic that the party of Thatcher has turned into one with people like Nigel who want to have property as a restricted "commodity" that can't be built and instead should be an income stream as others are denied the opportunity to have a property of their own. The complete opposite vision of what Thatcher believed in and made the Tories great.
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property. Margaret Thatcher
So you're not really against "property as a commodity" then. All bluster.
What are you talking about?
I have no objections to people running businesses from properties whatsoever, and there should be no shortage of available buildings to do so. Any profit or loss should be from how well the business is ran. That doesn't make property a commodity.
Commodities are fungible goods. A barrel of oil can be purchased or sold from one source, or from another. Property is not fungible, it is not a commodity.
That was the quickest reverse ferret yet from you.
> So far, the Republican candidates for speaker include Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Austin Scott of Georgia, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Byron Donalds of Florida.
> About a dozen lawmakers have said they are running or strongly considering a run for the speakership, and some of them have, in fact, already received votes on the House floor in the last week, including Tom Emmer, the No. 3 House Republican, and Byron Donalds of Florida.
> A spokesman for Kevin McCarthy says he is endorsing Tom Emmer, the Republican whip, as the next speaker.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.
If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.
The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.
We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).
If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.
Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.
I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.
Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.
If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.
Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.
Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.
Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.
We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.
Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.
Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.
But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.
It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.
Oh no you couldn't leave it, could you. I gave you an elegant judicious closer but you have to say something else.
Ok, cute analogy but Yes and No. It's not just the supply deficit that has led to our bizarre unhealthy irrational approach to residential property. There are those other factors I've mentioned. They're important. Trust me they are.
No, they're not.
Its entirely the supply shortage.
Without the supply shortage, all the other factors you mentioned wouldn't be relevant.
Take private sector landlords for instance: If there's an abundance of supply then a private sector landlord that holds a property that is put on the market for too much (or in poor quality) then the potential tenants have the ability to ignore that landlord and go elsewhere instead leaving the landlord paying tax on the land he's holding without a tenant to pay for it.
Oh no, Barty back on his self obsessed hobbyhorse. Property is called property because it is property. Some people are fortunate enough to invest in it and do well. It is a commodity. Owning a house is not a God given right, nor even a human right.
Here is a hint Bart, how about spending less time on her and spend some time building a business? When it is really successful you can take out an eye watering mortgage and buy a bigger house, or even an additional one on the coast. It is called capitalism.
Alternatively, you can be a socialist and be envious of people that have things that you do not.
Property is not a commodity, it is somewhere to live. I believe in Thatcherite capitalism, where everyone who works hard can afford a home of their own.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
How come you are against targeting BTL landlords and STLs then?
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
Build millions more houses and BTL and STL are not an issue.
If someone doesn't want to let off a private landlord, then they can ignore the landlord and buy a home of their own instead. Its only our shortage of supply that is creating issues where people are forced to let off the BTL landlord as there's no alternatives.
Its tragic that the party of Thatcher has turned into one with people like Nigel who want to have property as a restricted "commodity" that can't be built and instead should be an income stream as others are denied the opportunity to have a property of their own. The complete opposite vision of what Thatcher believed in and made the Tories great.
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property. Margaret Thatcher
So you're not really against "property as a commodity" then. All bluster.
What are you talking about?
I have no objections to people running businesses from properties whatsoever, and there should be no shortage of available buildings to do so. Any profit or loss should be from how well the business is ran. That doesn't make property a commodity.
Commodities are fungible goods. A barrel of oil can be purchased or sold from one source, or from another. Property is not fungible, it is not a commodity.
That was the quickest reverse ferret yet from you.
Its not a reverse ferret whatsoever, its you being obtuse.
Do you think I'm saying there should be no businesses in the country? No Tesco's? No offices?
Everyone should have the opportunity to own their own home. That others have the opportunity to operate a business should not take away from that.
Last Friday afternoon, hours after Dominique Bernard’s assassination, with the bloodstains still visible on the steps of the school, Emmanuel Macron showed up at Lycée Gambetta in Arras. Alongside Darmanin and a small group of elected officials, he came to speak with the school’s principal, other teachers and local parents. The local MP, Sebastien Chenu, also the Rassemblement National Vice-President of the House, thanked him for visiting his constituents so promptly, then gave voice to the feelings of many of those around him. “I have to say, Monsieur le Président, that the French people expect strong action. Words cannot stop terrorism.”
Witnesses were flabbergasted to see Macron utterly lose his rag. “Show some decency! Mind your own business! This is neither the time nor the place!” Members of the delegation said afterwards they’d never see the president so angry. “I felt I had to say this,” Chenu later said. “I simply encouraged him to act. I wasn’t lecturing him. He didn’t take it well. His reaction was disturbing: he seemed offended because he felt he didn’t have the upper hand, because I was pressing him… He’s always had trouble coming out clearly on Islamism and immigration.”
Comments
(Learning some weird Usonian legal terms following these trials.)
Ahahahahah
I think the chances of this are 0.09% but still
NYT live blog - Speaking to reporters on Friday after a campaign event in South Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida accused House Republicans of engaging in “palace intrigue” instead of “delivering results.”
“Look, I think it’s unfortunate that these guys can’t get their act together,” said Mr. DeSantis, a Republican running for president who once served in the House. “It’s like the gang that can’t shoot straight. They’ve been running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It’s not inspiring confidence. There’s a lot of theater.”
SSI - Given recent Anti-Semite Octopus scandal (also Aryan Nations White Elephant) shocked and appalled that RDS has gone from badmouthing beloved Mickey Mouse, to defaming innocent headless chickens.
Excess deaths correlate strongly with covid outbreaks. And not at all with vaccinations.
It doesn't mean we're necessarily missing a bunch of covid deaths (although that's possible); ambulance delays and delays in getting treated all increase in those times, and that does, we know, correlate with worse outcomes and higher deaths.
It's not rocket science.
Or evul vaccines, regardless of what that twat wants to convey.
That most outlets aren't broadcasting him spouting the latest scientifically and logically illiterate crap he's swallowed from the conspiracy-mongers isn't a real shock.
Although there are a handful of websites that will breathlessly repeat it, I guess.
Seems to me if they are doing it then reacting in some way - either with deliberate non-reaction or intense reaction - rather than just observing passively is more respectful. If they're not supposed to do anything in response then why not do it before the opponent is even on the field?
*suddenly sobers up*
Would be like strapping a bit of buttered toast onto the back of a cat where the rule of buttered toast landing face down meets the law of cats always landing on their feet and the cat-toast spins forever as the universe can’t quite work out what has happened.
Coz it is looking quite possible
Given the fiscal restraints surely the big things are
1 real reform of the NHS
2 making the welfare state contributory
3 ID cards?
4 turn the House of Lords into a federal senate
What else?
In all seriousness I'm sure ID cards will pop back up. I'm not one for conspiracies, but that one seems to be a perennial idea that floats out of Whitehall every few years.
And infrastructure. High speed rail back on the menu. And low sped rail. And BRT.
The Victory V from 2019 was good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgF8IVPeR48
As was Ireland's "Number 8", which I interpret as "Balls", from last week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lFTMaC0_9U
NZ collars are quite 2003,which I actually prefer to the 1980s collars the Argentines are sporting.
Liberals would oppose 3 and 4 if fully elected risks a Conservative upper house mid term
Five responses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju6LdGNxj20
The "friends" of BJ and LT have it in for Sunak because (a) he resigned from the cabinet and helped to precipate Boris's exit, and, (b) he explicitly warned against Truss's economic proposals. The fact that he was clearly right in both instancesl only serves to enrage the rightwing factionalists in the party.QED.
Commodities are raw resources like oil, gas, silicone, lead, iron, copper, gold etc that can be traded and used in processing, rather than buildings which do not.
You want to make money off investments? Invest in stocks, shares, bonds etc . . . profitable businesses. That is meaningful capitalism. Investing in land and doing nothing with it? That is not.
I'm not envious of anyone, I have a home of my own, millions others don't despite the fact they do work hard too. Thatcher would be turning in her grave at that, and what your ilk have done to her party.
https://youtu.be/Tl12krku5Os?si=dN-_W4dc8r42-i-d
I used to be fiercely anti ID cards, but now I am increasingly Meh. I don't like them, but technology makes them a lot less objectionable. And they might help stem illegal migration, abuse of the NHS etc. I can see Starmer doing it
You jump on your pro-market freedom horse every time someone suggests that would be a way to increase home ownership in our cities.
Fully contributory JSA equally hasn't made much difference..
As for the NHS
Some people just can't be helped.
Is it just me, or is the haka actually quite sh1t in itself? It's not intimidating in the slightest - it's some nice boys from Auckland sticking their tongues out a bit.
The late Bill Tidy's Cloggies offer a perhaps even better model.
If someone doesn't want to let off a private landlord, then they can ignore the landlord and buy a home of their own instead. Its only our shortage of supply that is creating issues where people are forced to let off the BTL landlord as there's no alternatives.
Its tragic that the party of Thatcher has turned into one with people like Nigel who want to have property as a restricted "commodity" that can't be built and instead should be an income stream as others are denied the opportunity to have a property of their own. The complete opposite vision of what Thatcher believed in and made the Tories great.
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property.
Margaret Thatcher
https://youtu.be/htCTWZqCMhQ?si=R8e_wTPCeMKzWyHS
Not yet, anyway.
(Not up for a debate)
In the case of Truss, Sunak toppled a leader who had let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.63%, (though they had risen more during his own time as Chancellor) and replaced her with himself, who has let 10 year bond yields rise to 4.85% and rising, a 25 year high and the highest in the G7. And unlike the possible rewards of 'Trussonomics' in terms of growth, the stagnation of 'Rishinomics' offers no delayed benefit, reprieve, or hope.
Other than that, great point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8nXkFWRHwo
Couldn't agree with this more, but apparently to the likes of Nigel, this is socialism.
It’s the database of all your information the government wanted to build alongside it
I said myself before Rishi's Net Zero announcements that we needed a new leader, because Rishi wouldn't be able to credibly sell a change in approach. That has proven true. Not only could he not credibly sell it, he couldn't stick to it or build policies around it - he reverted to farting on about maths and smoking. A new strategy needs a new leader to sell it. People have moved on from caring what Rishi says.
No more detail as to how this was brokered .
Not least because I have an ex-girlfriend I can well imagine in that lot.
If I were on a rugby pitch and faced that before kick off I would shit myself.
Though might cause opponents to laugh so hard it would literally bust a gut. Or two.
Although, as you know, the allies did eventually clear the Nazis out of North Africa. So, in some grand sense, it succeeded.
I have no objections to people running businesses from properties whatsoever, and there should be no shortage of available buildings to do so. Any profit or loss should be from how well the business is ran. That doesn't make property a commodity.
Commodities are fungible goods. A barrel of oil can be purchased or sold from one source, or from another. Property is not fungible, it is not a commodity.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfNDkUIIPck&pp=ygUZYm9sZCBzaXIgam9obiB0d28gcm9ubmllcw==
Best bit starts at 3.21
Some senior Israeli officials told the Americans during meetings over recent days to expect a war that could last as long as 10 years.
> So far, the Republican candidates for speaker include Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Austin Scott of Georgia, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Byron Donalds of Florida.
> About a dozen lawmakers have said they are running or strongly considering a run for the speakership, and some of them have, in fact, already received votes on the House floor in the last week, including Tom Emmer, the No. 3 House Republican, and Byron Donalds of Florida.
> A spokesman for Kevin McCarthy says he is endorsing Tom Emmer, the Republican whip, as the next speaker.
Do you think I'm saying there should be no businesses in the country? No Tesco's? No offices?
Everyone should have the opportunity to own their own home. That others have the opportunity to operate a business should not take away from that.
https://unherd.com/2023/10/terror-is-exposing-frances-failed-state/
Last Friday afternoon, hours after Dominique Bernard’s assassination, with the bloodstains still visible on the steps of the school, Emmanuel Macron showed up at Lycée Gambetta in Arras. Alongside Darmanin and a small group of elected officials, he came to speak with the school’s principal, other teachers and local parents. The local MP, Sebastien Chenu, also the Rassemblement National Vice-President of the House, thanked him for visiting his constituents so promptly, then gave voice to the feelings of many of those around him. “I have to say, Monsieur le Président, that the French people expect strong action. Words cannot stop terrorism.”
Witnesses were flabbergasted to see Macron utterly lose his rag. “Show some decency! Mind your own business! This is neither the time nor the place!” Members of the delegation said afterwards they’d never see the president so angry. “I felt I had to say this,” Chenu later said. “I simply encouraged him to act. I wasn’t lecturing him. He didn’t take it well. His reaction was disturbing: he seemed offended because he felt he didn’t have the upper hand, because I was pressing him… He’s always had trouble coming out clearly on Islamism and immigration.”