Phew, all those CLP officials that resigned can unresign cos it turns out that when SKS said that Israel had the right to cut off water and power to Gaza he actually meant to say that Israel DIDN’T have the right to cut off water and power to Gaza. Easy done.
The closer Starmer gets to being PM the more embittered the hard left become.
It's difficult not to be amused about that. They had their day. And lost.
Forget about the hard left for a moment. How do you think the average Labour member will feel when the realities of office push Starmer towards positions to the right of Suella Braverman?
What will happen when he adopts my plan on ending the boats? And smashing sub-minimum wage employment?
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I talked with a councillor a couple of days ago, at a Police-meets-the-locals event.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
It’s not difficult to understand. If you increase the population by 10% in a decade, then you also need to increase the housing stock by at least 10% as well.
And the roads, schools, hospitals, parks and so on and so forth ...
Since 2001 our population has grown by 14% but our investment has not kept pace. Our housing stock has not done the same. Our roads have gone up by an atrocious 2% (almost entirely local) while population has gone up by 14%. I'll let others do the same numbers for schools, hospitals and whatever else.
Nothing wrong with our population growing, it has for centuries, but we need investment and development to go with it.
Phew, all those CLP officials that resigned can unresign cos it turns out that when SKS said that Israel had the right to cut off water and power to Gaza he actually meant to say that Israel DIDN’T have the right to cut off water and power to Gaza. Easy done.
The closer Starmer gets to being PM the more embittered the hard left become.
It's difficult not to be amused about that. They had their day. And lost.
Forget about the hard left for a moment. How do you think the average Labour member will feel when the realities of office push Starmer towards positions to the right of Suella Braverman?
They won't care, because he'll be chucking out immigrants in a progressive, caring way. Not like those nasty Tories.
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.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
At least if anyone crashes into it there should be good signal to call an ambulance
(quite possibly not true, of course - I don't know much about the radiation characteristics of mobile masts, but there could well be a dead zone around the base)
ETA: There's a popular multi-use cycle path in N Yorks with an electricity pole slap bang in the middle. Unlit track too. It does have some pretty worn white paint on it to protect against collisions. Nettles either side, so space enough to have wiggled the path around it if not wanting to move the pole - I'm assuming the pole pre-dates the path!
Are you sure it's a phone mast? looks like the atmospheric pollution sampling stations we have locally.
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.
Even if prices fall, it does not do away with the housing shortage and the fact we need millions more homes.
Starmer should be aiming to liberate planning to encourage a million houses a year built over the next decade to keep up with forthcoming population growth and reverse the chronic shortage.
A massive landslide in line with these results will leave Labour in the same position as The SNP in 2015, with lots of MPs elected in seats they would normally not expect to win. In Scotland that meant a lot of numpties and the occasional rouge elected, dependent on slavishly following the leadership line to preserve their lucrative positions and career progression. It will be interesting to see the calibre and performance of Labour's equivalent.
That prospect is one reason Labour has been so ruthless with its selection processes I think. No doubt they'll get some wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Jared O'Maras or the bizarrely inappropriate people chosen in historically safe Red Wall seats in 2019 because Len and Unite were fans. No doubt we'll start hearing criticism that they are boring drones, but I'd take loads of dull, earnest councillor types over the eccentric firebrands who inevitably seem to end their careers in some form of disgrace.
I’m still amazed, as an IT consultant, how poor the main political parties are at vettting MP candidates for online behaviour. There’s only a couple of hundred new ones each election, it’s really not difficult if you have £1m budget, to weed out the Jared O’Maras before they become a massive problem.
You don't need a big budget. You hire external outfits to do this for x a head. The X depends on how thoroughly they dig.
Oh of course. I’d be happy to enable such research for an appropriate fee.
Jared was sui generis, a paper candidate in an unwinnable seat in an unexpected election called three years too early for the FTPA, and O'Mara was picked only after several other prospective candidates had declined. There was no time for proper vetting, and rule him out and you then have to persuade someone else to stand, and all the best candidates want to stand where they can actually win.
All correct, but you still don’t let people stand for MP seats who haven’t been properly vetted. It only takes a few days.
Yes but remember the FTPA meant there were three years to the next general election which was more than enough time for a leisurely selection process with proper vetting. Theresa May's snap election caught Labour on the hop. It had only a few days to find candidates across the country and even then, several candidates turned down this seemingly unwinnable seat before O'Mara was chosen.
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
Cambridgeshire is not at the centre of the current rainfall event. But yesterday, when driving back from my lunchtime swim, I splashed through a local ford that was still passable. Coming back after today's swim, I found the ford at the highest level I've ever seen it (the footpath and bridge alongside were also flooded), with a Ford Transit stuck in the middle of it.
And this ford is very near the top of the stream's watershed.
If it's like this here, goodness knows what it's like further north...
Just been sent movie of Dunbar Harbour with the waves breaking over the very high backing wall on top of the sea wall. This is it in normal times
Wes Streeting is seriously impressive, a proper street fighter. A great media combatant and commensurate performer.
He still hasn’t deleted this tweet though, trying to make it look like he was having cancer treatment whilst the Downing St garden party attendees were hungover. I can’t help but think less of him for it
6-day hangover? A bit of a stretch, I guess... But is the general point undermined by not being in hospital at the exact same time the party took place?
It was the same date in a different year. I think that does undermine the point
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
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.
Currently there is an affordability pause and a number of people selling up from the amateur landlord thing. So house prices are going down a bit.
The problem is that that this is finite. The population pressure is continuous. House price increases will resume - note that there is no drop in the rental sector prices.
Inflation can provide a useful "cover" for erosion of price. As in "My house went up 2% last year" - but inflation was 5%. What it won't do is erode underlying prices.
If we don't seriously increase supply, we will simply have 15% price rises (or whatever) with 5% inflation.
Are they talking about that blue octopus in the pic with her? If so, it looks like a reversible plushy that are all the rage with kids atm. My son has one. I fear this is a bit of a stretch outrage.
Have a closer look at the photo. It is obviously a very staged photo. The octopus is on a cushion which is on top of the sofa they are on. Who puts cushions on top of a sofa? The cushion is there to uplift the octopus to ensure it is very clearly visible almost as the fifth person. Why would they go to such efforts to put an octopus into the picture?
Wes Streeting is seriously impressive, a proper street fighter. A great media combatant and commensurate performer.
He still hasn’t deleted this tweet though, trying to make it look like he was having cancer treatment whilst the Downing St garden party attendees were hungover. I can’t help but think less of him for it
6-day hangover? A bit of a stretch, I guess... But is the general point undermined by not being in hospital at the exact same time the party took place?
It was the same date in a different year. I think that does undermine the point
Ah... In that case I will concede the point!
(Although the tweet doesn't actually reference the garden parties - there were also the eve of DoE funeral parties on 16 April 2021, but that really would be one hell of a hangover)
The swivelati in the express are still convinced that they are losing to the centre-left because the tories are not right wing enough.... the core radical, brexiteer/natcon supporter will never be happy till we are all goosestepping. Give them an inch and they take a yard. Sunak was to the right of the party 5 years ago. Now they call him a wet leftie. That is an extreme development and it is poison to the electorate, which is undergoing a demographic transition to the left leaning millenials leaving the boomers in their wake. But beyond the radical right policy stance on nigh on everything, it is also the utter incompetence and deplorable governance that is off putting to voters.
"Have no doubt: the possibility of a regionwide war that could draw the United States in is much greater today than it was five days ago, senior U.S. officials told me."
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I talked with a councillor a couple of days ago, at a Police-meets-the-locals event.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
Tbf (and I don't mean with you) this point is frequently used in that way by wily operators of the hard right. The idea is you start with the assumption that people instinctively don't want lots more development in our Green and Pleasant - typically amping this prospect up with a bit of 'new Birmingham every fortnight' type rhetoric - and then you say, well we simply have to do it (build a new Birmingham every fortnight) because of all this immigration we have ('have' here is subliminally 'allow' not 'need'). The desired effect of the conversation (when embarked on in this spirit) is that your audience thinks (although maybe doesn't always say), ah well maybe we should stop letting all these foreigners in then, our country is full, and hey so *that's* why I can't see a GP or get a council house or a place at the nursery etc etc.
Well, if you put pint and half in a pint pot, shit will go sideways.
Buy a bigger fucking pot.
Not sure who I like less - the zero immigration crowd or the "We love immigration. Just not places for immigrants to live, work, sleep"
When I become unDictator, they will be providing shade for the roads. Maybe on opposite sides of the road? Hmmmmmm.....
Yes but let me ask you a searingly honest direct question - seeing as we know each other and so you won't take it the wrong way:
Do you - YOU - genuinely want to see masses of new development happening all over our country? Would you vote for it?
Or is your affection for this line of argument (with the stressed link to immigration) more that it allows you to unsettle those 'love immigration in the abstract' types who annoy you as much as racists do?
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
It's OK to put it in a path but not in the middle of the road. That's the entire point.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
That's the point. No-one would think of putting that in the middle of the road because it would clearly be a fucking stupid place to put it. Putting it in the middle of the cycle path is also a fucking stupid place to put it, and is only going to happen when the engineer doesn't consider the cycle path as important as the road. That's motor-normativity.
(edit: Carnyx posted the same thing at the same time as me)
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
So sounds like you and I are on the same page then?
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
We are in an unbelievably dangerous place in world affairs.
If it kicks off big time in Middle East, US will have to divert weaponry and focus from helping Ukraine. If that allows Putin to take the country - how long before Poland can't hang back any longer and goes in? Then we have a european war and a middle east war.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
That's the point. No-one would think of putting that in the middle of the road because it would clearly be a fucking stupid place to put it. Putting it in the middle of the cycle path is also a fucking stupid place to put it, and is only going to happen when the engineer doesn't consider the cycle path as important as the road. That's motor-normativity.
No, its not motor-normativity, its sheer frigging incompetence.
And stuff gets installed on roads all the time lately now too. By me I've got these ridiculous squares in the middle of the road I have to drive over, or around, which are inconvenient and damage your suspension even when travelling at or below the speed limit. Its ridiculous as it means people dodge them by driving down the bus stop instead which doesn't have them, or driving into the middle of the road into the oncoming traffic's lane makes them easier to avoid too.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
It's OK to put it in a path but not in the middle of the road. That's the entire point.
No, its not OK to do either. Which is why the lamp posts aren't in the path.
That someone is incompetent doesn't make it right or normal, whoever did that should be made to undo it and put it in the right position, like the lamp posts that are in the same image.
Wes Streeting is seriously impressive, a proper street fighter. A great media combatant and commensurate performer.
He still hasn’t deleted this tweet though, trying to make it look like he was having cancer treatment whilst the Downing St garden party attendees were hungover. I can’t help but think less of him for it
6-day hangover? A bit of a stretch, I guess... But is the general point undermined by not being in hospital at the exact same time the party took place?
It was the same date in a different year. I think that does undermine the point
2021: Downing Street parties took place on the evening before the funeral of Prince Philip on 17 April; Wes Streeting’s operation to remove a cancerous kidney was on 21 May.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I talked with a councillor a couple of days ago, at a Police-meets-the-locals event.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
Tbf (and I don't mean with you) this point is frequently used in that way by wily operators of the hard right. The idea is you start with the assumption that people instinctively don't want lots more development in our Green and Pleasant - typically amping this prospect up with a bit of 'new Birmingham every fortnight' type rhetoric - and then you say, well we simply have to do it (build a new Birmingham every fortnight) because of all this immigration we have ('have' here is subliminally 'allow' not 'need'). The desired effect of the conversation (when embarked on in this spirit) is that your audience thinks (although maybe doesn't always say), ah well maybe we should stop letting all these foreigners in then, our country is full, and hey so *that's* why I can't see a GP or get a council house or a place at the nursery etc etc.
Well, if you put pint and half in a pint pot, shit will go sideways.
Buy a bigger fucking pot.
Not sure who I like less - the zero immigration crowd or the "We love immigration. Just not places for immigrants to live, work, sleep"
When I become unDictator, they will be providing shade for the roads. Maybe on opposite sides of the road? Hmmmmmm.....
Yes but let me ask you a searingly honest direct question - seeing as we know each other and so you won't take it the wrong way:
Do you - YOU - genuinely want to see masses of new development happening all over our country? Would you vote for it?
Or is your affection for this line of argument (with the stressed link to immigration) more that it allows you to unsettle those 'love immigration in the abstract' types who annoy you as much as racists do?
I want to build a Birmingham every fucking year. Until everyone has a fucking enormous house. You know, one of those vast mansions where you have one bedroom per adult/child.
As opposed to the arseholes who seem to think that immigration is wonderful as long as they live in barracks on the Latifundium or something.
5 minute video of a Russian assault at Avdiivka. If you watch this it would seem that the only orders the Russians had been given was "Charge!". It is not clear to me how Russia can do anything but lose with this approach.
This video of a failed Russian assault in #Avdiivka is probably going to be shown in war colleges in the West as a primer how to defeat the "modern" Russian army in the field. What is evident, is that Russia cannot deploy artillery to support its armor and they do not have the trained fighters needed to properly conduct a combined arms battle.
On the part of the AFU, their most valuable assets are the skill and bravery of their fighters and the competency of their commanders. In addition, NATO training, superior NATO artillery with further range than their Russian counterparts and a fanatical focus on counterbattery operations made this possible. https://x.com/UKikaski/status/1715319638504985061?s=20
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.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour tend to spring off to the hard left when they lose power) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
It's OK to put it in a path but not in the middle of the road. That's the entire point.
They also put trees in the middle of footpaths. Then get surprised that wheelchair users can't get past a tree that is 3 foot in diameter on a path about 4 wide, and the heave from the roots is demolishing garden walls.....
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
That's the point. No-one would think of putting that in the middle of the road because it would clearly be a fucking stupid place to put it. Putting it in the middle of the cycle path is also a fucking stupid place to put it, and is only going to happen when the engineer doesn't consider the cycle path as important as the road. That's motor-normativity.
(edit: Carnyx posted the same thing at the same time as me)
Quite. How long would it last in the way of the cars? Not long at all. But pedestrians, wheelchairs ... they have to suck it up.
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.
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.
Even if prices fall, it does not do away with the housing shortage and the fact we need millions more homes.
Starmer should be aiming to liberate planning to encourage a million houses a year built over the next decade to keep up with forthcoming population growth and reverse the chronic shortage.
A housing bill could: *Empower councils to impose swingeing taxes on unbuilt developer-owned plots, raising revenue and encouraging building *Enshrine into law the Government's proposed changes to waterway nutrient laws that are blocking 100,000 dwellings with planning permisson being built *Offer a range of incentives for the conversion of upstairs high street properties into dwellings for workers
None of these would be remotely offensive to anyone. The Government just doesn’t *do* anything - it's in headlong retreat.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
Maybe we're in line for a short government this time.
Nothing's impossible. Perhaps the SDP might have won in 1983 but for the Falklands, perhaps Hague could've turned Labour's 2000 wobble over the fuel price protest into something more lasting, and perhaps a better leader than Ed Miliband could've won in 2015 - he quite often had small polling leads, after all.
But parties do tend to take some time to work through the stages of grief following defeat. Following a long period in office, they tend to be exhausted, sometimes angry at the electorate, introspective, and lacking in a clear, shared vision of what they want to offer the country. There is every indication all of that applies in spades to the Tories.
It's going to be really hard for the Tories in 2028/29. Not impossible, but very hard.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
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.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
It's OK to put it in a path but not in the middle of the road. That's the entire point.
There is enough room for pedestrians to walk beside the phone mast, and probably wheelchair users too. Cyclists should be in the road imo and not terrorising pedestrians but in any case there is enough space for them too, even if they have to slow down and pass in single file.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
It's OK to put it in a path but not in the middle of the road. That's the entire point.
There is enough room for pedestrians to walk beside the phone mast, and probably wheelchair users too. Cyclists should be in the road imo and not terrorising pedestrians but in any case there is enough space for them too, even if they have to slow down and pass in single file.
Why put it on the path? That's stupid. Put in on the bits where things aren't supposed to be moving.
Are they talking about that blue octopus in the pic with her? If so, it looks like a reversible plushy that are all the rage with kids atm. My son has one. I fear this is a bit of a stretch outrage.
Have a closer look at the photo. It is obviously a very staged photo. The octopus is on a cushion which is on top of the sofa they are on. Who puts cushions on top of a sofa? The cushion is there to uplift the octopus to ensure it is very clearly visible almost as the fifth person. Why would they go to such efforts to put an octopus into the picture?
If intentionally antisemitic, would one not refuse to edit the post and just deny the connection?
The 'cushion' incidentally, is someone's leg. The octopus on knee does seem a bit random, but if anyone's deliberate action it is presumably that of the owner of the knee in question.
ETA: The knee-owner also apparently didn't get the memo about the subject of the photo, holding a 'CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!' placard. 🤷
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)
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.
Not if there are enough properties so that tenants have the choice and ability to move, and not if it's backed up by an effective regulator enforcing fair rules.
Besides, I do have quite a bit of experience with the social rented sector and the notion that all their properties are "decent affordable place[s] to live" is optimistic. It doesn't happen just by the nature of them being social rented.
I didn't mean 'social housing = good' by definition as regards its quality. Of course it has to be looked after. A neglected property is a neglected property regardless of who owns it. What I meant was a bigger and better social housing sector is a crucial part of the overall solution if we're serious about everybody having a decent affordable place to live.
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
So sounds like you and I are on the same page then?
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
The idea of NI on all income has been aired on here so often I hop eStarmer and Reeves have picked it up. I also hope they don’t get asked about and feel compelled to stupidly deny it (‘we have no plans to do that’ will do).
Then again, when they get into Downing Street they can no doubt use the ‘now we’ve seen the books…’ line to tax the rich and old a bit more.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
That's the point. No-one would think of putting that in the middle of the road because it would clearly be a fucking stupid place to put it. Putting it in the middle of the cycle path is also a fucking stupid place to put it, and is only going to happen when the engineer doesn't consider the cycle path as important as the road. That's motor-normativity.
(edit: Carnyx posted the same thing at the same time as me)
Quite. How long would it last in the way of the cars? Not long at all. But pedestrians, wheelchairs ... they have to suck it up.
Stuff like that lasts in the way of cars for years, with drivers needing to suck it up and drive around it.
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.
We are in an unbelievably dangerous place in world affairs.
If it kicks off big time in Middle East, US will have to divert weaponry and focus from helping Ukraine. If that allows Putin to take the country - how long before Poland can't hang back any longer and goes in? Then we have a european war and a middle east war.
I don't the RF would go all the way to Lvov. The four oblasts, collapse of the Green T-Shirt regime and the installation of a Lukashenko type figure would do (for now). Would Poland decide it was worth starting WW3 in those circumstances? Probably not.
Anyway, don't worry about it. The Russians are going to run out of ammo/tanks/samogon any day now.
We need to question why Russia are doing this. Is it a last throw of the dice? Have their superiors told them they have to capture something before the onset of winter? What equipment does Russia actually have left (there are videos of them using simple metal pipes as mortar launchers)?
It's bizarre. Even when they were making futile armoured assaults on Vuhledar they never threw away so much material in one go.
The most pessimistic explanation I can think of is that the Russians are confident in receiving massive supplies of new equipment from North Korea, or possibly from China (via North Korea) and so they feel able to throw any amount of equipment at Avdiivka to make a gain.
Or they might feel that the political situation in the US creates a window of opportunity. If they can make another propaganda gain of Avdiivka they might hope that Congress would refuse to send any further equipment to Ukraine.
We are in an unbelievably dangerous place in world affairs.
If it kicks off big time in Middle East, US will have to divert weaponry and focus from helping Ukraine. If that allows Putin to take the country - how long before Poland can't hang back any longer and goes in? Then we have a european war and a middle east war.
If people aren’t worried by this then they should be.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)
Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.
I've put together a plausible switching matrix that mirrors last night's results in both constituencies. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BucryrqabapwnmRAqH3U-hMxAi3Zd_sfRLd21yb2AXo/edit?usp=sharing There are a number of assumptions eg Very few switched to the Tories. Very few switched from Labour (as LD squeeze message was not credible) and so on in a logical progression to build up a switching picture.
My main takeaways: 50% of the 2019 Tory vote in Tamworth didn't vote. 40% of the 2019 Tory vote in mid Beds didn't vote and the other 10% voted LibDem. An equal number of Tories (10%) voted Labour in both constituencies. The squeeze worked on the LIbDems in Tamworth but didn't work for either party in mid-Beds. In the event it wasn't necessary.
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.
And yet houses near me are getting built apace, and are getting snapped up as soon as they hit the market. Because we have a chronic housing shortage.
And houses can be sold, new, for well under the average market price for the rest of the country. Which wouldn't be possible under your absurd theory that building costs is the prohibiting factor.
The prohibiting factor is land + consent. Eliminate that, costs plummet.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
It's OK to put it in a path but not in the middle of the road. That's the entire point.
There is enough room for pedestrians to walk beside the phone mast, and probably wheelchair users too. Cyclists should be in the road imo and not terrorising pedestrians but in any case there is enough space for them too, even if they have to slow down and pass in single file.
Jeez, “… and probably wheelchair users too.” That’s ok then!
The point surely is that for no additional cost at all it could have been placed a foot to the right and not been on the path at all.
Cambridgeshire is not at the centre of the current rainfall event. But yesterday, when driving back from my lunchtime swim, I splashed through a local ford that was still passable. Coming back after today's swim, I found the ford at the highest level I've ever seen it (the footpath and bridge alongside were also flooded), with a Ford Transit stuck in the middle of it.
And this ford is very near the top of the stream's watershed.
If it's like this here, goodness knows what it's like further north...
Wet. Very wet.
This is the nearest river-level monitoring station to me -
I've put together a plausible switching matrix that mirrors last night's results in both constituencies. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BucryrqabapwnmRAqH3U-hMxAi3Zd_sfRLd21yb2AXo/edit?usp=sharing There are a number of assumptions eg Very few switched to the Tories. Very few switched from Labour (as LD squeeze message was not credible) and so on in a logical progression to build up a switching picture.
My main takeaways: 50% of the 2019 Tory vote in Tamworth didn't vote. 40% of the 2019 Tory vote in mid Beds didn't vote and the other 10% voted LibDem. An equal number of Tories (10%) voted Labour in both constituencies. The squeeze worked on the LIbDems in Tamworth but didn't work for either party in mid-Beds. In the event it wasn't necessary.
Note the Conservative +ReformUK/UKIP vote was over 50% in Tamworth, the Conservatives would likely have held it under Boris.
Even in Mid Beds the Conservative + ReformUK/UKIP vote was bigger than the Labour vote
"Have no doubt: the possibility of a regionwide war that could draw the United States in is much greater today than it was five days ago, senior U.S. officials told me."
Friedman, NY Times.
Key to this is what it has gone from and to though. It may still be a very very small possibility and still increased considerably.
This is, presumably, feedback based on Biden’s visit to Israel.
It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
So sounds like you and I are on the same page then?
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
The idea of NI on all income has been aired on here so often I hop eStarmer and Reeves have picked it up. I also hope they don’t get asked about and feel compelled to stupidly deny it (‘we have no plans to do that’ will do).
Then again, when they get into Downing Street they can no doubt use the ‘now we’ve seen the books…’ line to tax the rich and old a bit more.
Doesn’t need to be explicit, just reduce NI consistently and let it whither on the vine.
We are in an unbelievably dangerous place in world affairs.
If it kicks off big time in Middle East, US will have to divert weaponry and focus from helping Ukraine. If that allows Putin to take the country - how long before Poland can't hang back any longer and goes in? Then we have a european war and a middle east war.
That will suit our current leaders fine. Unconditional support has its consequences
Wes Streeting is seriously impressive, a proper street fighter. A great media combatant and commensurate performer.
He still hasn’t deleted this tweet though, trying to make it look like he was having cancer treatment whilst the Downing St garden party attendees were hungover. I can’t help but think less of him for it
6-day hangover? A bit of a stretch, I guess... But is the general point undermined by not being in hospital at the exact same time the party took place?
It was the same date in a different year. I think that does undermine the point
2021: Downing Street parties took place on the evening before the funeral of Prince Philip on 17 April; Wes Streeting’s operation to remove a cancerous kidney was on 21 May.
Somebody behaved badly but it wasn’t Streeting.
They were nursing hangovers over a month later?
More likely that he has confused the Garden party on 20th May 2020 with his operation on 21st May 2021 I would say. Especially as that party was first reported the day of Streeting’s tweet.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
That's the point. No-one would think of putting that in the middle of the road because it would clearly be a fucking stupid place to put it. Putting it in the middle of the cycle path is also a fucking stupid place to put it, and is only going to happen when the engineer doesn't consider the cycle path as important as the road. That's motor-normativity.
(edit: Carnyx posted the same thing at the same time as me)
Quite. How long would it last in the way of the cars? Not long at all. But pedestrians, wheelchairs ... they have to suck it up.
Stuff like that lasts in the way of cars for years, with drivers needing to suck it up and drive around it.
But that’s okay, it’s active travel, non motor-normativity, what’s not to like etc etc…..
Well done, Labour: two excellent wins in very different seats. The people have decided, ('the bastards'), and there'll be a Labour government after the next election. The only question will be how much of a majority they get. I expect more playing it safe from Starmer - don't scare the horses.
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
Well done the LDs? ".... my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances....."?? Get a grip on reality.
The fall in the Conservative vote share was much the same in both constituencies, 28% in Mid Beds and 25% in Tamworth. Your idea that the LDs somehow aided Labour in mid Beds by causing a collapse in the Conservative vote that otherwise wouldn't have happened doesn't hold water.
What the LDs did do was to badly split the anti-Conservative vote by spending much of the campaign trying to talk down Labour's chances, with blatantly false claims about being set to win and the usual false bar charts even in the face of polling that pointed to the opposite, and highly personal attacks on the Labour candidate. They were desperate to come out ahead of Labour. Some people fell for it but overall the LDs still failed badly. The idea that the LDs somehow helped Labour to win is risible. Labour won in spite of their best efforts.
Breathe! We have stress-tested the theory that Lab & LD vying for votes delivers a Tory victory. Lets assume for a minute that some of the LD votes added may have been winnable for Labour - that is almost certainly true. At the same time some - and likely many more - of the LD votes added were not winnable by Labour.
Labour have 2 tasks - convert people to directly switch Con > Lab. Or if they won't do that to switch Con > not Con. The former is a 2 vote swing to Labour, the latter a 1 vote swing.
Lets say that 60% of the new LD voters weren't winnable by Labour. The safest path is have them vote for someone not Con. Riskier is hope that they don't vote at all - might they change their mind? Riskiest is just not bother with Con voters because Never Kissed A Tory.
Tamworth is nor Mid Beds. Your form of Labour absolutism is a risk to your majority. There are scores of seats where you Cannot Win - even in a landslide. Do you want the Con tally reduced by 1 or not?
While it's obviously true that SOME Tories won't switch to Labour and will switch to LibDem, my impression - IMO reniforced by the results - is that it's now quite rare. What is more common is that Tories don't switch to either of us, but accept a potential PM Starmer as an OK result (so a "stop Starmer!" campaign by the Tories won't pay off as the "stop Corbyn" campaign did).
I do think that the result discredits the kind of scorched-earth LibDem tactical campaigning that they tried in mid-Beds. It's demonstrably untrue that "Labour can't win here" in this sort of seat, but the LD negative tactics and dodgy bar charts came close to misleading the voters and handing the seat to the Tories. I remember that you suggested that your party should ease off in mid-Beds once the polls showed the position.
What seems to me perfeclty fair is Verulamus's comment on the lsst thread that the LibDems should concentrate resources on say 40 seats. There are certaibly 40 seats in Britain (discretion prevents me from naming them) where they can perfectly reasonably say that only they can beat the Tories, and gaining 40 seats would be a damn good result, without trying to go for the seats where Labour were second even in the poor 2019 election.
The 40 seat strategy is absolutely the plan. There won't be resources to go after even 100 seats. But again again, Labour are very unlikely to win scores of seats where we could. Do you want those seats to stay Tory or not?
It's difficult to answer that in general. My starting point would be that Labour and LibDems should respectively prioritise Tory seats where each came second, and shouldn't try hard in seats where we respectively came third. That should surely cope with 90% of cases?
There may be exceptions where there are boundary changes or the 2019 result was a wild one-off for some reason, but in general there will always be problems where the third-placed party makes a massive effort - the second-placed local party members are likely to fight back even if HQ is quietly advising them not to bother. There will be a few seats where the two parties objectively have a roughly equal chance and there a fight may be inevitable, but I hope they will be rare. A seat like mid-Beds shouldn't be an exception merely on the basis that "yes we were third by a long way but only we can appeal to Tories", since that's been disproved.
Look at it like this. MidBeds showed that competition isn't harmful to the ABC cause. And a near 20% Con > LD swing means we can demolish a whole stack of them in places where even on the current surge you would struggle. Its all good. There will be very very few 3 way battles anyway.
Mid Beds came very close to becoming an object lesson in how competition is harmful to the ABC cause. A majority of 1,200 could easily have turned into a narrow Conservative hold. Your party is fortunate that that was not the outcome, because the brickbats really would have come your way. But that doesn't stop me from telling it like it is.
From a poor 3rd place the Lib Dems ran a dishonest canoaugn to do everything they could to get Labour voters to switch to the Conservatives. You published fake polls showing the LDs in front. You skewed bar charts. You spread all sorts of false stories about the Labour candidate, and went out of your way with direct attacks against him personally. And so on. You persisted in this even in the face of polls which showed you well behind. Above all it was the dishonesty and intensity of that dishonesty that gets me.
And then today you have the gall to claim that all along your anti-Labour campaign helped Labour defeat the Conservatives.
From a poor 3rd place doesn't work though - having won other by-elections from the same. I don't disagree with some of your comments about the campaign literature - typical LD by-election fare of legend. But that does not negate the proposition that we took away Tory votes that you could not.
You may believe that your position is righteous and I respect that. Doesn't mean that all voters feel the same, and there are an awful lot of people who will not vote Labour - just as the same is true with people like us who will not vote Tory
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)
Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.
She was considered unelectable in 1975
Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
I'm curious what the heck in your mind the relationship is between that idiocy, and what you call as "motor-normativity"?
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
That's the point. No-one would think of putting that in the middle of the road because it would clearly be a fucking stupid place to put it. Putting it in the middle of the cycle path is also a fucking stupid place to put it, and is only going to happen when the engineer doesn't consider the cycle path as important as the road. That's motor-normativity.
(edit: Carnyx posted the same thing at the same time as me)
Quite. How long would it last in the way of the cars? Not long at all. But pedestrians, wheelchairs ... they have to suck it up.
Stuff like that lasts in the way of cars for years, with drivers needing to suck it up and drive around it.
But that’s okay, it’s active travel, non motor-normativity, what’s not to like etc etc…..
The 'active travel' stuff is all very good, except it is most frequently used by cyclists to mean... cyclists. But 'active travel' includes pedestrians, runners; and all sorts of other people going about their daily business under their own power.
Hence we end up with madness like Cambridge, where a pavement is not suitable for pedestrians because a cycle path has been built.
It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.
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.
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
So sounds like you and I are on the same page then?
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
The idea of NI on all income has been aired on here so often I hop eStarmer and Reeves have picked it up. I also hope they don’t get asked about and feel compelled to stupidly deny it (‘we have no plans to do that’ will do).
Then again, when they get into Downing Street they can no doubt use the ‘now we’ve seen the books…’ line to tax the rich and old a bit more.
Doesn’t need to be explicit, just reduce NI consistently and let it whither on the vine.
Yes, so long as ICT or other taxes go up to compensate… because we’re still going to need new schools and hospitals and we certainly shouldn’t be borrowing more.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)
Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.
She was considered unelectable in 1975
Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.
She was also well to the left of Powell, who was considered all-too-electable. Not that he was a Tory by then but that's a different point.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)
Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.
She was considered unelectable in 1975
Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.
The Old Guard and Wets didn't, they largely voted for Heath and Whitelaw.
It was the party right that got her elected. The media coverage against her initially saw her as unelectable and lightweight and extreme and Callaghan was expected to beat her comfortably
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)
Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.
She was considered unelectable in 1975
Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.
She was also well to the left of Powell, who was considered all-too-electable. Not that he was a Tory by then but that's a different point.
On culture slightly left of Powell, on economics she was at least as right as Powell if not more so
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
Maybe we're in line for a short government this time.
Nothing's impossible. Perhaps the SDP might have won in 1983 but for the Falklands, perhaps Hague could've turned Labour's 2000 wobble over the fuel price protest into something more lasting, and perhaps a better leader than Ed Miliband could've won in 2015 - he quite often had small polling leads, after all.
But parties do tend to take some time to work through the stages of grief following defeat. Following a long period in office, they tend to be exhausted, sometimes angry at the electorate, introspective, and lacking in a clear, shared vision of what they want to offer the country. There is every indication all of that applies in spades to the Tories.
It's going to be really hard for the Tories in 2028/29. Not impossible, but very hard.
The big problem for Labour is that the economic situation is really very bad. It's easy to see this turning out like 1974-9, where Labour simply don't have the answers to the economic (and budgetary and public service funding) issues, and there's a couple of events like the IMF bailout and the winter of discontent that shatter public confidence in a Labour government.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
Maybe we're in line for a short government this time.
Nothing's impossible. Perhaps the SDP might have won in 1983 but for the Falklands, perhaps Hague could've turned Labour's 2000 wobble over the fuel price protest into something more lasting, and perhaps a better leader than Ed Miliband could've won in 2015 - he quite often had small polling leads, after all.
But parties do tend to take some time to work through the stages of grief following defeat. Following a long period in office, they tend to be exhausted, sometimes angry at the electorate, introspective, and lacking in a clear, shared vision of what they want to offer the country. There is every indication all of that applies in spades to the Tories.
It's going to be really hard for the Tories in 2028/29. Not impossible, but very hard.
I was thinking more in terms of different types of coalition government, especially if they decide to bring in proportional representation.
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.
Not if there are enough properties so that tenants have the choice and ability to move, and not if it's backed up by an effective regulator enforcing fair rules.
Besides, I do have quite a bit of experience with the social rented sector and the notion that all their properties are "decent affordable place[s] to live" is optimistic. It doesn't happen just by the nature of them being social rented.
I didn't mean 'social housing = good' by definition as regards its quality. Of course it has to be looked after. A neglected property is a neglected property regardless of who owns it. What I meant was a bigger and better social housing sector is a crucial part of the overall solution if we're serious about everybody having a decent affordable place to live.
I help with a charity doing re-works for children's rooms. The properties are in various estates around London. The state of the properties is always... interesting.
It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.
It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.
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
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
Maybe we're in line for a short government this time.
Nothing's impossible. Perhaps the SDP might have won in 1983 but for the Falklands, perhaps Hague could've turned Labour's 2000 wobble over the fuel price protest into something more lasting, and perhaps a better leader than Ed Miliband could've won in 2015 - he quite often had small polling leads, after all.
But parties do tend to take some time to work through the stages of grief following defeat. Following a long period in office, they tend to be exhausted, sometimes angry at the electorate, introspective, and lacking in a clear, shared vision of what they want to offer the country. There is every indication all of that applies in spades to the Tories.
It's going to be really hard for the Tories in 2028/29. Not impossible, but very hard.
The big problem for Labour is that the economic situation is really very bad. It's easy to see this turning out like 1974-9, where Labour simply don't have the answers to the economic (and budgetary and public service funding) issues, and there's a couple of events like the IMF bailout and the winter of discontent that shatter public confidence in a Labour government.
That's my take on what's likely to happen but hopefully not as the 74-79 years (not to mention 79-81) were really, really grim.
I've put together a plausible switching matrix that mirrors last night's results in both constituencies. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BucryrqabapwnmRAqH3U-hMxAi3Zd_sfRLd21yb2AXo/edit?usp=sharing There are a number of assumptions eg Very few switched to the Tories. Very few switched from Labour (as LD squeeze message was not credible) and so on in a logical progression to build up a switching picture.
My main takeaways: 50% of the 2019 Tory vote in Tamworth didn't vote. 40% of the 2019 Tory vote in mid Beds didn't vote and the other 10% voted LibDem. An equal number of Tories (10%) voted Labour in both constituencies. The squeeze worked on the LIbDems in Tamworth but didn't work for either party in mid-Beds. In the event it wasn't necessary.
Note the Conservative +ReformUK/UKIP vote was over 50% in Tamworth, the Conservatives would likely have held it under Boris.
Even in Mid Beds the Conservative + ReformUK/UKIP vote was bigger than the Labour vote
Yes that's right. It is ironic that a split of the rightwing vote deprived the Tories of both seats, whereas the concern was that a leftwing split in mid Beds would give it to the Tories! Quite funny really.
Wes Streeting is seriously impressive, a proper street fighter. A great media combatant and commensurate performer.
He still hasn’t deleted this tweet though, trying to make it look like he was having cancer treatment whilst the Downing St garden party attendees were hungover. I can’t help but think less of him for it
6-day hangover? A bit of a stretch, I guess... But is the general point undermined by not being in hospital at the exact same time the party took place?
It was the same date in a different year. I think that does undermine the point
2021: Downing Street parties took place on the evening before the funeral of Prince Philip on 17 April; Wes Streeting’s operation to remove a cancerous kidney was on 21 May.
Somebody behaved badly but it wasn’t Streeting.
They were nursing hangovers over a month later?
More likely that he has confused the Garden party on 20th May 2020 with his operation on 21st May 2021 I would say. Especially as that party was first reported the day of Streeting’s tweet.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
(Snip)
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
Ah, an area I know *very* well. Yes, the locals were less than kind to Bonnie Prince Charlie and his troops. It sometimes feels as as though some of the locals there now knew him personally...
I did a run there a couple of Christmas's ago. In about six miles, I crossed a medieval causeway; ran along an old railway line; passed a disused canal; run along a canal; passed the site of a massive WW2 camp; and ran past the only neolithic barrows in the Trent Valley.
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.
Yep, there are many moving parts (on the politics and the economics) and they often bump against each other.
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.
It is.
Deal with the planning issue that adds 1000% to the cost of unplanned land on average, and the problem is solved.
Its been done in countries around the planet.
Getting the state involved in housebuilding is no solution and just further politicises that which needs to be depoliticised. Getting the state to fix the problem blocking housebuilding is a solution.
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
So sounds like you and I are on the same page then?
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
The idea of NI on all income has been aired on here so often I hop eStarmer and Reeves have picked it up. I also hope they don’t get asked about and feel compelled to stupidly deny it (‘we have no plans to do that’ will do).
Then again, when they get into Downing Street they can no doubt use the ‘now we’ve seen the books…’ line to tax the rich and old a bit more.
Doesn’t need to be explicit, just reduce NI consistently and let it whither on the vine.
Never going to happen given how much Employer NI is worth to HMRC...
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.
Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
Maybe we're in line for a short government this time.
Nothing's impossible. Perhaps the SDP might have won in 1983 but for the Falklands, perhaps Hague could've turned Labour's 2000 wobble over the fuel price protest into something more lasting, and perhaps a better leader than Ed Miliband could've won in 2015 - he quite often had small polling leads, after all.
But parties do tend to take some time to work through the stages of grief following defeat. Following a long period in office, they tend to be exhausted, sometimes angry at the electorate, introspective, and lacking in a clear, shared vision of what they want to offer the country. There is every indication all of that applies in spades to the Tories.
It's going to be really hard for the Tories in 2028/29. Not impossible, but very hard.
I was thinking more in terms of different types of coalition government, especially if they decide to bring in proportional representation.
I suspect the Labour government will have enough on their hands dealing with the economy and global crisis to get involved in PR/HoL reform or do much with Brexit.
All of these are likely to be second term "aspirations" in the end, IMO.
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.
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
On the contrary, Sunak's driving sham was a pathetic caricature of what an extremely out of touch individual believes those who drive think.
I said immediately it was preposterous as did other drivers here.
If you are so out of touch, whether it be because you've lived in the centre of a city for too long, or you travel across the country in a private jet, that you think drivers are all flat cap wearing weirdos with driving gloves and interested in any of the nonsense that Sunak spouted then you need to get in touch with some real people.
Perhaps a starting point would be to reflect upon why drivers pay such extreme amounts of net tax to the Exchequer but get so little back. Why the Treasury takes net tens of billions per annum off drivers, but road quality, maintenance, investment and development are all poor.
Because that, unlike any of the caricature gibberish you and Sunak seem to believe, is what real driving voters are reflecting upon. Why when we pay so much tax, is investment so bad?
Until Sunak has an answer to that question, he shouldn't expect any gratitude or votes.
I drive a car but am I a "driver"? Not sure it's a fundamental part of my identity, a la Alan Partridge.
Its a verb, so yes, if you drive you are a driver.
Which doesn't make it a fundamental part of your identity, everyone is unique.
I am fully aware that any generalising always means speaking generally and won't really represent everyone, but which better reflects your train of thought out of curiosity? Wondering why investment etc [in whatever you want investment in] is so poor, despite how much tax we pay? Or the weird caricature nonsense that Sunak spouted around Tory conference?
I wasn't even paying attention to what Sunak said at the Tory conference! I find the culture wars stuff so cringey and pathetic - presumably it plays with some important subset of the electorate but it is so sad and demeaning to everyone involved. I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
So sounds like you and I are on the same page then?
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
The idea of NI on all income has been aired on here so often I hop eStarmer and Reeves have picked it up. I also hope they don’t get asked about and feel compelled to stupidly deny it (‘we have no plans to do that’ will do).
Then again, when they get into Downing Street they can no doubt use the ‘now we’ve seen the books…’ line to tax the rich and old a bit more.
Doesn’t need to be explicit, just reduce NI consistently and let it whither on the vine.
"whither on the vine"? Have you been learning your English from the BBC or something?
It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.
Comments
Since 2001 our population has grown by 14% but our investment has not kept pace. Our housing stock has not done the same. Our roads have gone up by an atrocious 2% (almost entirely local) while population has gone up by 14%. I'll let others do the same numbers for schools, hospitals and whatever else.
Nothing wrong with our population growing, it has for centuries, but we need investment and development to go with it.
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.
Starmer should be aiming to liberate planning to encourage a million houses a year built over the next decade to keep up with forthcoming population growth and reverse the chronic shortage.
I don't think it's a mystery about the high taxes/poor services issue. We have an ageing population and we spend more and more on giving old people cash and services, which those of us still working have to pay for. Plus we have higher interest payments because of high debt, rate increases and inflation. Spending on other stuff has mostly moved sideways or gone down. And the economy has barely grown recently, which limits tax revenue. We need a programme to grow the economy, boost spending on education, housing and infrastructure, and contain the rising costs of ageing.
https://www.digitscotland.com/the-archaeology-of-dunbar/dunbar-harbour-east-lothian-2/
Wonder what it is like in Montrose? High tide at 5 or 6 this afternoon, and with the onshore wind; fortunately moon is only [edit] first quarter.
Do you think they should have built it in the middle of the road instead?
Its got nothing to do with motoring, its got to do with an imbecilic attitude towards investment and maintenance of transportation routes. It should be neither in the footpath, nor the road, it should be to the side of either. Hell I can see grass next to it, it could have gone in. Indeed in that same picture there's not one but two lamp posts, both of which miraculously are neither in the road, nor the footpath, but the grass instead.
Not everything is a matter of motorists vs active travel, in fact really both should be on the same side.
The problem is that that this is finite. The population pressure is continuous. House price increases will resume - note that there is no drop in the rental sector prices.
Inflation can provide a useful "cover" for erosion of price. As in "My house went up 2% last year" - but inflation was 5%. What it won't do is erode underlying prices.
If we don't seriously increase supply, we will simply have 15% price rises (or whatever) with 5% inflation.
So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.
So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.
(Although the tweet doesn't actually reference the garden parties - there were also the eve of DoE funeral parties on 16 April 2021, but that really would be one hell of a hangover)
Friedman, NY Times.
Do you - YOU - genuinely want to see masses of new development happening all over our country? Would you vote for it?
Or is your affection for this line of argument (with the stressed link to immigration) more that it allows you to unsettle those 'love immigration in the abstract' types who annoy you as much as racists do?
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4266514-ken-buck-says-hes-had-four-death-threats-amid-speaker-vote/
(edit: Carnyx posted the same thing at the same time as me)
We may disagree on how we grow the economy, but we recognise its importance.
And yes I am completely in favour of boosting spending on education (which has been cut to the bone, stupidly and counterproductively), and housing and infrastructure. And we need to restrain and contain the costs of ageing, and handle that on the tax side too (eg by removing tax exemptions like merging NI into Income Tax so everyone pays the same tax rate on their income whether its a salary, or a pension, or anything else).
If it kicks off big time in Middle East, US will have to divert weaponry and focus from helping Ukraine. If that allows Putin to take the country - how long before Poland can't hang back any longer and goes in? Then we have a european war and a middle east war.
And stuff gets installed on roads all the time lately now too. By me I've got these ridiculous squares in the middle of the road I have to drive over, or around, which are inconvenient and damage your suspension even when travelling at or below the speed limit. Its ridiculous as it means people dodge them by driving down the bus stop instead which doesn't have them, or driving into the middle of the road into the oncoming traffic's lane makes them easier to avoid too.
That someone is incompetent doesn't make it right or normal, whoever did that should be made to undo it and put it in the right position, like the lamp posts that are in the same image.
Somebody behaved badly but it wasn’t Streeting.
As opposed to the arseholes who seem to think that immigration is wonderful as long as they live in barracks on the Latifundium or something.
Were it not for that both Manchester and Heathrow airports were at capacity there would be increasing number of planes running that route....
This video of a failed Russian assault in #Avdiivka is probably going to be shown in war colleges in the West as a primer how to defeat the "modern" Russian army in the field. What is evident, is that Russia cannot deploy artillery to support its armor and they do not have the trained fighters needed to properly conduct a combined arms battle.
On the part of the AFU, their most valuable assets are the skill and bravery of their fighters and the competency of their commanders. In addition, NATO training, superior NATO artillery with further range than their Russian counterparts and a fanatical focus on counterbattery operations made this possible.
https://x.com/UKikaski/status/1715319638504985061?s=20
The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.
Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.
The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour tend to spring off to the hard left when they lose power) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.
Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.
*Empower councils to impose swingeing taxes on unbuilt developer-owned plots, raising revenue and encouraging building
*Enshrine into law the Government's proposed changes to waterway nutrient laws that are blocking 100,000 dwellings with planning permisson being built
*Offer a range of incentives for the conversion of upstairs high street properties into dwellings for workers
None of these would be remotely offensive to anyone. The Government just doesn’t *do* anything - it's in headlong retreat.
But parties do tend to take some time to work through the stages of grief following defeat. Following a long period in office, they tend to be exhausted, sometimes angry at the electorate, introspective, and lacking in a clear, shared vision of what they want to offer the country. There is every indication all of that applies in spades to the Tories.
It's going to be really hard for the Tories in 2028/29. Not impossible, but very hard.
Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.
Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation
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.
Also, add a segregated cycle lane.
SCOOP: BBC director general Tim Davie will address the next meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers.
To say this is highly unusual would be an understatement.
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1715355506078892505
If intentionally antisemitic, would one not refuse to edit the post and just deny the connection?
The 'cushion' incidentally, is someone's leg. The octopus on knee does seem a bit random, but if anyone's deliberate action it is presumably that of the owner of the knee in question.
ETA: The knee-owner also apparently didn't get the memo about the subject of the photo, holding a 'CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!' placard. 🤷
Then again, when they get into Downing Street they can no doubt use the ‘now we’ve seen the books…’ line to tax the rich and old a bit more.
Anyway, don't worry about it. The Russians are going to run out of ammo/tanks/samogon any day now.
The most pessimistic explanation I can think of is that the Russians are confident in receiving massive supplies of new equipment from North Korea, or possibly from China (via North Korea) and so they feel able to throw any amount of equipment at Avdiivka to make a gain.
Or they might feel that the political situation in the US creates a window of opportunity. If they can make another propaganda gain of Avdiivka they might hope that Congress would refuse to send any further equipment to Ukraine.
Keep showing a clip of the Spanish Minister of Social Rights speaks out against Israel's "planned genocide" in
Gaza.
, We as the government of Spain, need to suspenddiplomatic relations with Israel.
Not seen anyone calling her an Anti Semite yet.
There are no good outcomes, only less bad ones.
She was considered unelectable in 1975
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BucryrqabapwnmRAqH3U-hMxAi3Zd_sfRLd21yb2AXo/edit?usp=sharing
There are a number of assumptions eg
Very few switched to the Tories.
Very few switched from Labour (as LD squeeze message was not credible)
and so on in a logical progression to build up a switching picture.
My main takeaways:
50% of the 2019 Tory vote in Tamworth didn't vote.
40% of the 2019 Tory vote in mid Beds didn't vote and the other 10% voted LibDem. An equal number of Tories (10%) voted Labour in both constituencies.
The squeeze worked on the LIbDems in Tamworth but didn't work for either party in mid-Beds. In the event it wasn't necessary.
And houses can be sold, new, for well under the average market price for the rest of the country. Which wouldn't be possible under your absurd theory that building costs is the prohibiting factor.
The prohibiting factor is land + consent. Eliminate that, costs plummet.
The point surely is that for no additional cost at all it could have been placed a foot to the right and not been on the path at all.
This is the nearest river-level monitoring station to me -
https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/station/8100
Even in Mid Beds the Conservative + ReformUK/UKIP vote was bigger than the Labour vote
This is, presumably, feedback based on Biden’s visit to Israel.
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1715284878919340056?s=20
Edit: Here's why:
It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.
We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable. That is why I deleted the last post.
https://x.com/GretaThunberg/status/1715355506078892505?s=20
More likely that he has confused the Garden party on 20th May 2020 with his operation on 21st May 2021 I would say. Especially as that party was first reported the day of Streeting’s tweet.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/12/boris-johnson-admits-attending-downing-street-party-during-lockdown
You may believe that your position is righteous and I respect that. Doesn't mean that all voters feel the same, and there are an awful lot of people who will not vote Labour - just as the same is true with people like us who will not vote Tory
Hence we end up with madness like Cambridge, where a pavement is not suitable for pedestrians because a cycle path has been built.
Brilliant. I'd have been oblivious to that too, but then I don't hang around people who are clearly antisemitic.
It was the party right that got her elected. The media coverage against her initially saw her as unelectable and lightweight and extreme and Callaghan was expected to beat her comfortably
https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/1715298658491486393
I am a cyclist.
I am a pedestrian.
Albeit rarely simultaneously.
Then look at this Martin Rowson cartoon from earlier this year that looks more like something from Der Sturmer.
https://www.thejc.com/news/news/guardian-cartoonist-admits-controversial-car-crash-drawing-was-antisemitic-4RwFhlKTWtwkKY0RFKRRv9
Not all octopuses are antisemitic, but they can be used in an antisemitic way.
£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
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hangover#
3. (figurative) An unpleasant relic left from prior events.
I did a run there a couple of Christmas's ago. In about six miles, I crossed a medieval causeway; ran along an old railway line; passed a disused canal; run along a canal; passed the site of a massive WW2 camp; and ran past the only neolithic barrows in the Trent Valley.
There's so much history in that little area.
Deal with the planning issue that adds 1000% to the cost of unplanned land on average, and the problem is solved.
Its been done in countries around the planet.
Getting the state involved in housebuilding is no solution and just further politicises that which needs to be depoliticised. Getting the state to fix the problem blocking housebuilding is a solution.
https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/strasbourg-un-adolescent-arme-d-un-couteau-arrete-pres-d-une-synagogue-20231020
Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.
All of these are likely to be second term "aspirations" in the end, IMO.
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.