Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Where I am (Havering), we just need more homes of any sort. All the old people (nicely tucked up in their paid off 3-bed semis) are complaining about all the flats proposed for Romford Town Centre, but they don't notice that half the larger houses are subdivided anyway, to meet the demand for small flats. At the same time, many of the smaller houses are extended or being extended - there are lots of loft conversions, and I'm typing this in a loft room that needs extending with proper stairs - which points to a shortage of 3 and 4 bed family homes at the same time. And if I was in my 30s, I couldn't afford the small house I live in now, let alone the much larger one I did buy 20 years ago. And I certainly couldn't afford to rent.
Housing - in the south - is the number 1 issue affecting quality of life. There needs to be lots more built, until it costs about half the amount, both to buy and to rent.
I live about 30 miles NE of @PJH. There are 100 or so houses being built on an estate locally, the cheapest of which are £350,000. Incidentally, the local primary and secondary schools are pretty near full, as is the GP surgery. The bus service to the nearest mainline railway station has recently been cut back.
I live in a new build estate, made entirely out of three and four bed homes. No "starter" one or two bed homes have been built, no flats.
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
A significant player in that market - the developer - doesn't give a shit about housing supply. They would much rather restrict it by building detached houses and eating up land, allowing them to charge exorbitant prices for poor workmanship.
Imagine how more people could have been housed your estate was apartment buildings instead.
Yes but then we'd be living in an apartment. Yuck!
The only reason that developers get a say is due to our broken planning system that gives consent to developments.
Abolish the requirement for planning consent and everyone could get whatever they want built on their own land, which cuts out developments and developers altogether. Countries like Japan that have done that houses (or blocks of flat) are built mostly individually rather than as "estates" by a solitary developer.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
And many of those brickies are aging.
Likewise in other construction and industrial trades.
Which also provides a huge opportunity for any teenager who fancies a career in one of them.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Under 5% of estates pay IHT. For most people, with minimal planning the threshold is £1m. (325k x 2 + 350k family home).
The wealthier plan carefully. It's the most avoidable tax there is and keeps a number of impoverished Lincoln's Inn lawyers and accountants in shoes for their children.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Where I am (Havering), we just need more homes of any sort. All the old people (nicely tucked up in their paid off 3-bed semis) are complaining about all the flats proposed for Romford Town Centre, but they don't notice that half the larger houses are subdivided anyway, to meet the demand for small flats. At the same time, many of the smaller houses are extended or being extended - there are lots of loft conversions, and I'm typing this in a loft room that needs extending with proper stairs - which points to a shortage of 3 and 4 bed family homes at the same time. And if I was in my 30s, I couldn't afford the small house I live in now, let alone the much larger one I did buy 20 years ago. And I certainly couldn't afford to rent.
Housing - in the south - is the number 1 issue affecting quality of life. There needs to be lots more built, until it costs about half the amount, both to buy and to rent.
I live about 30 miles NE of @PJH. There are 100 or so houses being built on an estate locally, the cheapest of which are £350,000. Incidentally, the local primary and secondary schools are pretty near full, as is the GP surgery. The bus service to the nearest mainline railway station has recently been cut back.
Why is there only 100 houses being built? And why only on one estate?
Why not thousands of houses, on multiple estates, enabling prices to collapse?
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Because the Tories keep comparing the basic per-person 325K limit with the house prices in X: as indeed shown on here.
Carefully omitting that the correct comparison, if one is a Tory-Approved Person with a Spouse all proper and Children, is £1m compared to the house and bits.
So many people have got the impression that IHT is three times more severe than it really is. They vote to ban it when they don't realise its banning will, if anything, be to their detriment (by relieving the richer folk of yet more tax).
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
Jeremy Corbyn. And shame on us for supporting him.
He contributed to the 2019 Johnson win, this is true. But shame on us? No I don't feel that way. I didn't vote for Jez as leader but I feel fine about voting Labour in the 2 GEs when he was.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Because the Tories keep comparing the basic per-person 325K limit with the house prices in X: as indeed shown on here.
Carefully omitting that the correct comparison, if one is a Tory-Approved Person with a Spouse all proper and Children, is £1m compared to the house and bits.
So many people have got the impression that IHT is three times more severe than it really is. They vote to ban it when they don't realise its banning will, if anything, be to their detriment (by relieving the richer folk of yet more tax).
Yes. It's displacement activity. For years the more real problem for the middling sort, social care in old age, has been unresolved. This is a scandal.
I live in a new build estate, made entirely out of three and four bed homes. No "starter" one or two bed homes have been built, no flats.
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
A significant player in that market - the developer - doesn't give a shit about housing supply. They would much rather restrict it by building detached houses and eating up land, allowing them to charge exorbitant prices for poor workmanship.
Imagine how more people could have been housed your estate was apartment buildings instead.
Yes but then we'd be living in an apartment. Yuck!
The only reason that developers get a say is due to our broken planning system that gives consent to developments.
Abolish the requirement for planning consent and everyone could get whatever they want built on their own land, which cuts out developments and developers altogether. Countries like Japan that have done that houses (or blocks of flat) are built mostly individually rather than as "estates" by a solitary developer.
Britain is one of the most economically unbalanced countries in the world. We can't afford to let "the market" concrete over London's green belt and let the rest of the country wither and die. We need new towns in the left behind regions and that requires government action.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
A clear majority of the public hate IT even though the vast majority will never pay it . The Tories themselves realize that the public are mostly unaware of that fact and so hope to win some extra votes .
Labour need to be careful how they frame the argument over this . The best course of action IMO is to say now is not the right time as there are other pressing concerns , point out how few pay it and say they’ll conduct a review into IT , they shouldn’t say they’ll immediately reverse any cut .
I live in a new build estate, made entirely out of three and four bed homes. No "starter" one or two bed homes have been built, no flats.
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
A significant player in that market - the developer - doesn't give a shit about housing supply. They would much rather restrict it by building detached houses and eating up land, allowing them to charge exorbitant prices for poor workmanship.
Imagine how more people could have been housed your estate was apartment buildings instead.
Yes but then we'd be living in an apartment. Yuck!
The only reason that developers get a say is due to our broken planning system that gives consent to developments.
Abolish the requirement for planning consent and everyone could get whatever they want built on their own land, which cuts out developments and developers altogether. Countries like Japan that have done that houses (or blocks of flat) are built mostly individually rather than as "estates" by a solitary developer.
Britain is one of the most economically unbalanced countries in the world. We can't afford to let "the market" concrete over London's green belt and let the rest of the country wither and die. We need new towns in the left behind regions and that requires government action.
Who said only London should be developed? Not me.
I totally support new towns being built across the Northwest and elsewhere, I live in one myself.
And I totally support investment in new motorways etc to support those new towns.
Build lots of new motorways across the country, you'd improve infrastructure and transport connections to existing towns and enable the construction of new towns too. Win/win.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
And many of those brickies are aging.
Likewise in other construction and industrial trades.
Which also provides a huge opportunity for any teenager who fancies a career in one of them.
When they started building Cambourne West a couple of years ago, they built a work compound. After a while a few small sections of wall started appearing, only a few metres long and four or five feet high, which soon disappeared. I was told that these were built by apprentices as part of their training.
Incidentally, I've just been for a morning stroll along some of the new streets in Cambourne West. There are dozens of houses visually fully complete (including carpeting inside) that have not been moved into. I don't know if that's because they've been sold and no-one's moved in yet, or they have not been released by the builders.
It's a little eerie walking along a street of immaculate houses that are empty as the lack of signs of habitation are glaring. Although I pitied the deliveryman trying to find a house on a street that did not have a street sign and where the houses have signs saying "Plot number yyyy" rather than a house number...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
FYI the Germans and Swiss aren't forced at gunpoint into their apartments.
I'm not sure those getting massive rent increases from leach landlords will appreciate the pearl-clutching of the "Englishman's castle" brigade.
Young people are desperate to get into their own homes, even if it's a flat like the impoverished Swiss. I, too, would like to live on a country estate with several thousand hectares, but that wouldn't do too much for housing supply.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Paying taxes when I’m dead would very much be my preference.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Well you make a fair point. I think the point is lockdown wasn't binary - we had 20-odd months of it to a greater or lesser extent. I will retreat to my point being we should have had less of itm Fewer closures and more normality.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Otoh I guess kids seeing their parents having to go to food banks to keep them fed will feel a vast, warm sense of the essential generosity and goodness of society. What a start in life! #PBlogic
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
FYI the Germans and Swiss aren't forced at gunpoint into their apartments.
I'm not sure those getting massive rent increases from leach landlords will appreciate the pearl-clutching of the "Englishman's castle" brigade.
Young people are desperate to get into their own homes, even if it's a flat like the impoverished Swiss. I, too, would like to live on a country estate with several thousand hectares, but that wouldn't do too much for housing supply.
This country is undeveloped predominantly. We have 5% of the entire country dedicated to housing and 70% of the country dedicated to farming, an insane mix for such a highly populated country.
Rebalance that to 10% and 65% and we could see a 100% increase in land available for housing stock with only a 7% reduction in land available for farming.
Enough extra land for housing for everyone to live in a decent sized detached or semi-detached home with a garden.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
On the Fermi piano tuner principle: there are about 10K bricks in a house - order of magnitude. A brickie can do 500 bricks/day, less if it's tricky work. So that is about 20 brickie-days per house in optimal conditions - could easily be 30 brickie-days. That's full time, no holidays or sick leave. That's looking at 6-10 houses a yuear with no allowance for associated work.
I'm wondering if the HBF figures incloude trainees/mates/assistants as well, which would drive it down to somethiong like the cited four a year.
Edit: clean forgot winter as JJ points out. And I'm sitting here wondering if I will be able to repair the patio brickwork at all without frost supervening ...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
I think I have picked up a dose too.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Which is why different construction techniques can make a big difference. Some of the new homes being built in CW have an interior wall of pre-constructed wooden panels, complete with insulation. These are craned in and the brickies then put a brick skin on the outside of it. That's much quicker than even breeze-block construction.
As another side note, I don't see brick hods being used any more. I assume they use telescopic handlers to lift the bricks up onto scaffolding now.
The biggest danger to Labour at the moment seems to be this obsession with avoiding Tory attacks .
They seem to think that the public will swallow those attacks. This doesn’t show much confidence and they would be stupid to start watering down their Green plans .
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
But it's not just about forcing, is it?
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Otoh I guess kids seeing their parents having to go to food banks to keep them fed will feel a vast, warm sense of the essential generosity and goodness of society. What a start in life! #PBlogic
Yes that's right. The approved term from yesterday's discussion for the rise in foodbanks is "fantastic".
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
On the Fermi piano tuner principle: there are about 10K bricks in a house - order of magnitude. A brickie can do 500 bricks/day, less if it's tricky work. So that is about 20 brickie-days per house in optimal conditions - could easily be 30 brickie-days. That's full time, no holidays or sick leave. That's looking at 6-10 houses a yuear with no allowance for associated work.
I'm wondering if the HBF figures incloude trainees/mates/assistants as well, which would drive it down to somethiong like the cited four a year.
Yeah 20 days of work seems more like it to me. There's far more than 80 working days in the year.
There's a world of difference between saying 4 per year and 10 per year. Going at 10 per year the existing 42,000 bricklayers could build 420,000 houses per year.
Even if conditions are not optimal, making it 4 per year just does not pass the sniff test as being productive.
Improved competition and productivity would improve our housing market no end.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
FYI the Germans and Swiss aren't forced at gunpoint into their apartments.
I'm not sure those getting massive rent increases from leach landlords will appreciate the pearl-clutching of the "Englishman's castle" brigade.
Young people are desperate to get into their own homes, even if it's a flat like the impoverished Swiss. I, too, would like to live on a country estate with several thousand hectares, but that wouldn't do too much for housing supply.
For all those young people desperate to move into a flat there are also young families in flats desperate to move into a house with at least three bedrooms.
A healthy housing market would be producing the types of homes proportionate to the demand for the different types.
Whether it is or not I don't know.
In some places it might be impossible to provide all the housing demanded - in which case people will have to pay higher prices or relocate.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Wimbledon was being moved anyway. The only question was where.
The proposal was to shut down Wimbledon football club and start Belfast United, using the same financial structures. Pretty much.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
Millwall might have been a better fit., though they’d moved well before Saint Tony felt the hand of history upon his shoulder.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
The obvious answer is not to build with brick.
Their is a wonderful lightweight material called Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, which is cheap to produce and lightweight to build with.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Which is why different construction techniques can make a big difference. Some of the new homes being built in CW have an interior wall of pre-constructed wooden panels, complete with insulation. These are craned in and the brickies then put a brick skin on the outside of it. That's much quicker than even breeze-block construction...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Paying taxes when I’m dead would very much be my preference.
Its not the dead who pay the tax but the living inheritors.
Who we're told will have to suffer paying £200k IHT on a £1.5m inheritance.
Personally I wouldn't be bothered but then the chances of me inheriting £1.5m are nil.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Paying taxes when I’m dead would very much be my preference.
Although you wouldn't get the pleasure of moaning about it. And it is a pleasure, isn't it.
"Amount of tax I pay, but what do I get for it? Bugger all."
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Snip
No its rubbish. I worked as a brickies mate (hod carrying, mixing etc) after leaving school and then each summer during university. Any brickie who could only build the equivalent of 4 houses a year would not be employed for long. As others have mentioned the more accurate fgure would be the equivalent of 10 to 15 houses worth a year depedning on size. Certainly more for the shoe boxes developers seem to be building these days.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Paying taxes when I’m dead would very much be my preference.
Its not the dead who pay the tax but the living inheritors.
Who we're told will have to suffer paying £200k IHT on a £1.5m inheritance.
Personally I wouldn't be bothered but then the chances of me inheriting £1.5m are nil.
Er .... legally, the *executors in trust for the deceased* - so it is indeed the dead person who pays the tax.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
FYI the Germans and Swiss aren't forced at gunpoint into their apartments.
I'm not sure those getting massive rent increases from leach landlords will appreciate the pearl-clutching of the "Englishman's castle" brigade.
Young people are desperate to get into their own homes, even if it's a flat like the impoverished Swiss. I, too, would like to live on a country estate with several thousand hectares, but that wouldn't do too much for housing supply.
For all those young people desperate to move into a flat there are also young families in flats desperate to move into a house with at least three bedrooms.
A healthy housing market would be producing the types of homes proportionate to the demand for the different types.
Whether it is or not I don't know.
In some places it might be impossible to provide all the housing demanded - in which case people will have to pay higher prices or relocate.
That isn't the case - you simply build higher or extend the town into the next few fields...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
I’m mildly fascinated by the proliferation of allotment type settlements in Berlin, often with quite sophisticated chalet type houses and mostly immaculately maintained. Are they common across German cities?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
On the Fermi piano tuner principle: there are about 10K bricks in a house - order of magnitude. A brickie can do 500 bricks/day, less if it's tricky work. So that is about 20 brickie-days per house in optimal conditions - could easily be 30 brickie-days. That's full time, no holidays or sick leave. That's looking at 6-10 houses a yuear with no allowance for associated work.
I'm wondering if the HBF figures incloude trainees/mates/assistants as well, which would drive it down to somethiong like the cited four a year.
Yeah 20 days of work seems more like it to me. There's far more than 80 working days in the year.
There's a world of difference between saying 4 per year and 10 per year. Going at 10 per year the existing 42,000 bricklayers could build 420,000 houses per year.
Even if conditions are not optimal, making it 4 per year just does not pass the sniff test as being productive.
Improved competition and productivity would improve our housing market no end.
Careful - you're assuming the ends of real world ranges that benefit your argument. Not the likely middles.
I live in a new build estate, made entirely out of three and four bed homes. No "starter" one or two bed homes have been built, no flats.
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
A significant player in that market - the developer - doesn't give a shit about housing supply. They would much rather restrict it by building detached houses and eating up land, allowing them to charge exorbitant prices for poor workmanship.
Imagine how more people could have been housed your estate was apartment buildings instead.
Yes but then we'd be living in an apartment. Yuck!
The only reason that developers get a say is due to our broken planning system that gives consent to developments.
Abolish the requirement for planning consent and everyone could get whatever they want built on their own land, which cuts out developments and developers altogether. Countries like Japan that have done that houses (or blocks of flat) are built mostly individually rather than as "estates" by a solitary developer.
Britain is one of the most economically unbalanced countries in the world. We can't afford to let "the market" concrete over London's green belt and let the rest of the country wither and die. We need new towns in the left behind regions and that requires government action.
Plus a key part of solving the housing crisis is to refresh the social rented sector.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
On the Fermi piano tuner principle: there are about 10K bricks in a house - order of magnitude. A brickie can do 500 bricks/day, less if it's tricky work. So that is about 20 brickie-days per house in optimal conditions - could easily be 30 brickie-days. That's full time, no holidays or sick leave. That's looking at 6-10 houses a yuear with no allowance for associated work.
I'm wondering if the HBF figures incloude trainees/mates/assistants as well, which would drive it down to somethiong like the cited four a year.
Yeah 20 days of work seems more like it to me. There's far more than 80 working days in the year.
There's a world of difference between saying 4 per year and 10 per year. Going at 10 per year the existing 42,000 bricklayers could build 420,000 houses per year.
Even if conditions are not optimal, making it 4 per year just does not pass the sniff test as being productive.
Improved competition and productivity would improve our housing market no end.
I fear this is another example of someone looking at someone else's job, and opining how unproductively it is done. When if you were doing it yourself, you would have a very different view because you know of all the little complexities that make the job harder...
4 per year absolutely passes the sniff test, especially as it depends on what the definition of 'bricklayer' is.
(Incidentally, decades ago when my dad was building, he only had a few specialised bricklayers. He had many more generalised labourers who could lay bricks - because they were so much more adaptable and useful. If needed, they could lay bricks (and especially blocks); any ornate or difficult work was left to the specialists. That may be different for larger housebuilders who might have large cadres of specialist bricklayers.)
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
True. I know a pretty well-off person in Germany who chooses to live in a flat when they'd almost certainly be able to afford a large house.
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
I think I have picked up a dose too.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
Both in our eighties, I sometimes regret holding the Left-ish views I do; if I was ‘conventional’ I could have an argument with our grandchildren instead of a discussion, where we agree!
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
I’m mildly fascinated by the proliferation of allotment type settlements in Berlin, often with quite sophisticated chalet type houses and mostly immaculately maintained. Are they common across German cities?
Er ... 'some of the UK' surely - the property prices don't suggest any great rush to get out of the average New Town, Marchmont or Kelvinsaide tenement flat ...
PS. Mind, leasehold law in England is pretty miserable. Might be a factor in the differential perception.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Which is why different construction techniques can make a big difference. Some of the new homes being built in CW have an interior wall of pre-constructed wooden panels, complete with insulation. These are craned in and the brickies then put a brick skin on the outside of it. That's much quicker than even breeze-block construction.
As another side note, I don't see brick hods being used any more. I assume they use telescopic handlers to lift the bricks up onto scaffolding now.
Block construction is incredibly fast. Which is why it is liked.
*giggles* someone on my YouTube channel is objecting to me responding to their "only EVs are paying more for car insurance" comment by posting a Sky report of The Association of British Insurers statement containing statistics.
What media source would they prefer? And what source would they have which trumps the ABI about British Insurance costs?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Snip
No its rubbish. I worked as a brickies mate (hod carrying, mixing etc) after leaving school and then each summer during university. Any brickie who could only build the equivalent of 4 houses a year would not be employed for long. As others have mentioned the more accurate fgure would be the equivalent of 10 to 15 houses worth a year depedning on size. Certainly more for the shoe boxes developers seem to be building these days.
You’re forgetting the idiotic stoppages and incompetence that seems to abound in large build operations. Often sites are stopped for trivial reasons. The inefficiency is farcical.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Snip
No its rubbish. I worked as a brickies mate (hod carrying, mixing etc) after leaving school and then each summer during university. Any brickie who could only build the equivalent of 4 houses a year would not be employed for long. As others have mentioned the more accurate fgure would be the equivalent of 10 to 15 houses worth a year depedning on size. Certainly more for the shoe boxes developers seem to be building these days.
Ditto here, and my dad built stuff. And I disagree, for some of the reasons I give below. Four is probably a little low, but nowhere near to the extent you claim.
Another factor is work availability: bricklaying is an early job in the construction process, but also relies on other tasks being completed, both before and during (e.g. footings, scaffolding etc). I bet it's very difficult keeping the pipeline of work for brickies full, especially on smaller sites.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
Leasehold.
In a UK flat, you don't own a single brick, yet are subject to absurd and often inflated service charges, and as the post-Grenfell era has demonstrated, would have more statutory rights if your car if it caught fire than you ever would trying to get the "owners" of the block you lease to pay up, as they're usually a shell company in the Bahamas...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Which is why different construction techniques can make a big difference. Some of the new homes being built in CW have an interior wall of pre-constructed wooden panels, complete with insulation. These are craned in and the brickies then put a brick skin on the outside of it. That's much quicker than even breeze-block construction.
As another side note, I don't see brick hods being used any more. I assume they use telescopic handlers to lift the bricks up onto scaffolding now.
Others may have their own barriers to competition they think are a priority, so they can be addressed as well, but to me the number one barrier to competition is planning consent.
Anyone who wants to build on any land zoned for housing should be able to do so, without seeking permission first - so long as whatever is built is built within predefined building codes. Which would include new construction as well as extensions, redevelopments, bulldozing and rebuilding pre-existing homes etc.
Giving permission to Barratt Homes for an entire estate then no other permission to anyone else gives Barratt Homes a monopoly position within that development to control it. Giving permission to an oligopoly of developers is not much better. Permission should exist for everyone at all times, automatically.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Paying taxes when I’m dead would very much be my preference.
Its not the dead who pay the tax but the living inheritors.
Who we're told will have to suffer paying £200k IHT on a £1.5m inheritance.
Personally I wouldn't be bothered but then the chances of me inheriting £1.5m are nil.
Er .... legally, the *executors in trust for the deceased* - so it is indeed the dead person who pays the tax.
Legally but not psychologically.
And IHT is a very psychological tax, its feared and resented rather than experienced.
To mix the issues being discussed this morning, IHT is a virus which few people get but are terrified of whereas income tax, national insurance, VAT etc are viruses which are endemic and everyone is continually infected by so that they rarely notice them.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
Leasehold.
In a UK flat, you don't own a single brick, yet are subject to absurd and often inflated service charges, and as the post-Grenfell era has demonstrated, would have more statutory rights if your car if it caught fire than you ever would trying to get the "owners" of the block you lease to pay up, as they're usually a shell company in the Bahamas...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
I’m mildly fascinated by the proliferation of allotment type settlements in Berlin, often with quite sophisticated chalet type houses and mostly immaculately maintained. Are they common across German cities?
Yes, they are! Allotments are popular among Germany's flat-dwellers, and many of them spend large amounts of time there at the weekend. Not just gardening though, often simply enjoying the peace and nice weather in the summer. And, as you say, they frequently have garden sheds that have been equipped to the extent that they are virtually second homes.
As we're talking about new build and brickies, I fear it's time for me to subject everyone once more to the horrors being committed around here.
This house has now been rendered and looks nice (in fact, I think it's been moved into) but what horrors lie underneath.
For anyone who says "it's rendered, it doesn't matter...", according to my friendly local plasterer, and my dad, the water and heat absorption of the different bricks will lead to cracking of the render well before the render's usual lifetime. It's also simply not doing a good job: if they cut corners like that, where else are they cutting corners?
Also, on the other side of Cambridge:
"Plans submitted to knock down 83 faulty new homes in Cambs"
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
I think I have picked up a dose too.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
Both in our eighties, I sometimes regret holding the Left-ish views I do; if I was ‘conventional’ I could have an argument with our grandchildren instead of a discussion, where we agree!
It was a difficult few days having to divert my folks from politics and culture war issues to keep the peace. They have always been Conservatives but not previously so intolerant and at times racist.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
I’m mildly fascinated by the proliferation of allotment type settlements in Berlin, often with quite sophisticated chalet type houses and mostly immaculately maintained. Are they common across German cities?
Yes, they are! Allotments are popular among Germany's flat-dwellers, and many of them spend large amounts of time there at the weekend. Not just gardening though, often simply enjoying the peace and nice weather in the summer. And, as you say, they frequently have garden sheds that have been equipped to the extent that they are virtually second homes.
Yes, and you see it on the outskirts of Dutch cities too, with allotments of flowers and sheds that are more like beach huts.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
I think I have picked up a dose too.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
Ah bad luck. Hope you shrug it off quickly.
Yes, it's not the drama queen it was but you still don't want it, esp if you're elderly. I was due to travel to my parents on Christmas Day, but woke up feeling just a bit 'off'. Normally I'd have ignored it but my dad is 90 and full time caring for my mum who's 88. so I did a Covid test. Positive. Trip cancelled.
I was pissed off but actually it's lucky I had a stock of tests and lucky that I decided to use one. If I'd gone ahead and given them the bug in their condition and circumstances, well you don't want that on your mental plate, do you.
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
I think I have picked up a dose too.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
Both in our eighties, I sometimes regret holding the Left-ish views I do; if I was ‘conventional’ I could have an argument with our grandchildren instead of a discussion, where we agree!
It was a difficult few days having to divert my folks from politics and culture war issues to keep the peace. They have always been Conservatives but not previously so intolerant and at times racist.
Ah well, a relief to get back to the gently progressive purlieus of PB then.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
So each brickie working full time can only do four houses worth of work a year?
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
As a matter of interest, which 'barriers to competition' are you talking about?
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Which is why different construction techniques can make a big difference. Some of the new homes being built in CW have an interior wall of pre-constructed wooden panels, complete with insulation. These are craned in and the brickies then put a brick skin on the outside of it. That's much quicker than even breeze-block construction.
As another side note, I don't see brick hods being used any more. I assume they use telescopic handlers to lift the bricks up onto scaffolding now.
Block construction is incredibly fast. Which is why it is liked.
Breeze blocks are amazing things; especially the fact they flat (at least for a few hours, before the water seeps into the holes...). But they're blooming ugly IMV. So you generally have breeze-block inner walls and brick outer walls.
Another form of aerated concrete which RAAC has recently made famous...
PS. Mind, leasehold law in England is pretty miserable. Might be a factor in the differential perception.
Mmm; and to be fair to this government they are at least aware that there's a problem and trying to improve things. (Too late for me -- after an awful leasehold experience a couple of decades ago I resolved never to buy leasehold again. Plus some of the issues are inherent to being in a shared building, which means at least some cooperation and consensus between flat owners is needed to get anything done.)
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
Leasehold.
In a UK flat, you don't own a single brick, yet are subject to absurd and often inflated service charges, and as the post-Grenfell era has demonstrated, would have more statutory rights if your car if it caught fire than you ever would trying to get the "owners" of the block you lease to pay up, as they're usually a shell company in the Bahamas...
Although in London (at least in my experience) you normally own a share of the freehold in addition to the lease.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
But it's not just about forcing, is it?
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
But it's not just about forcing, is it?
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
One of the market signalling difficulties is this: In London and the SE most of the market is saying something simple - if you are not quite rich stay away. In the old days Mayfair signals were different from Old Kent Road signals. No longer - they are all 'Rich only' signals. But no society can be built effectively that way.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
Boris Johnson. How did such a man become PM? I still ponder that from time to time. Have we learnt the relevant lesson? I do hope so.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
I think I have picked up a dose too.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
Both in our eighties, I sometimes regret holding the Left-ish views I do; if I was ‘conventional’ I could have an argument with our grandchildren instead of a discussion, where we agree!
It was a difficult few days having to divert my folks from politics and culture war issues to keep the peace. They have always been Conservatives but not previously so intolerant and at times racist.
Sympathy. My late father could be racist if someone from a racial minority had upset him but extremely supportive if someone from a racial minority needed support. He became Conservative in middle age, but, as his sister told him, didn’t dare ‘come our’ while his father, an ex-miner, was still alive.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
As they were in Sweden. And for longer than in the UK.
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
As they were in Sweden. And for longer than in the UK.
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
My mum still thinks the sun shines out of Johnsons arse. She got Nadines book for a Chritmas present, and not as an ironic read.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
Leasehold.
In a UK flat, you don't own a single brick, yet are subject to absurd and often inflated service charges, and as the post-Grenfell era has demonstrated, would have more statutory rights if your car if it caught fire than you ever would trying to get the "owners" of the block you lease to pay up, as they're usually a shell company in the Bahamas...
A treasure trove of data and analysis in this FT article, explaining why leaseholders are second class citizens but only in England and Wales, where leasehold prevails. People are happy to live in flats elsewhere in the world, but also in Scotland, where commonhold is the norm, too. In England and Wales 95% of flats are leasehold. The above article makes it very clear that leasehold is to blame for our aversion to living in flats.
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
My mum still thinks the sun shines out of Johnsons arse. She got Nadines book for a Chritmas present, and not as an ironic read.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
As they were in Sweden. And for longer than in the UK.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
In my experience, flats are much more pleasant places to live in Germany than they are in the UK. They are typically low-rise, spacious and well maintained with properly tended communal outdoor areas. People typically live in a rented flat in town when they are young, moving to (or building) a large, detached house in the suburbs as their family grows. The high population density in the town centres creates a buzz that the younger folks enjoy, while the suburbs are more peaceful and individualistic.
Leasehold.
In a UK flat, you don't own a single brick, yet are subject to absurd and often inflated service charges, and as the post-Grenfell era has demonstrated, would have more statutory rights if your car if it caught fire than you ever would trying to get the "owners" of the block you lease to pay up, as they're usually a shell company in the Bahamas...
A treasure trove of data and analysis in this FT article, explaining why leaseholders are second class citizens but only in England and Wales, where leasehold prevails. People are happy to live in flats elsewhere in the world, but also in Scotland, where commonhold is the norm, too. In England and Wales 95% of flats are leasehold. The above article makes it very clear that leasehold is to blame for our aversion to living in flats.
I'm amazed that a society that values property owning so highly has allowed the situation to persist for so long.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
But it's not just about forcing, is it?
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
But it's not just about forcing, is it?
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
One of the market signalling difficulties is this: In London and the SE most of the market is saying something simple - if you are not quite rich stay away. In the old days Mayfair signals were different from Old Kent Road signals. No longer - they are all 'Rich only' signals. But no society can be built effectively that way.
Thirty years ago we sold our London house for around £150k and bought a tastefully-extended servant's cottage in Warwickshire for roughly the same. Now the former is "worth" £1.5M while the latter a measly £500K. So it has cost us a million quid to live here, and worth every penny in my humble opinion.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
But it's not just about forcing, is it?
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
But that demand and price is limited by capacity.
We could meet some of the demand for living in Mayfair by building tower blocks all over Hyde Park.
But that's not going to please others.
The situation is one of trade-offs between location, price, size, type, quality and other factors.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
I'm not going to go any further. As the husband of a teaching assistant injured whilst apparently not working in a school which wasn't open whilst looking after pupils who weren't there, I will take your usual wankery under advisement.
"Open" is an absolute. Something is, or isn't. "Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open." - is Eton not open then?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
As they were in Sweden. And for longer than in the UK.
A ranty page that seems as misnamed and worthy of rolling your eyes at as Independent SAGE.
But lets take the few points it makes on its merits.
Schools were not mandated to close, unlike in the UK, but were instead allowed "to move to remote or hybrid learning in the event of outbreaks of staff issues". Which is precisely what I recommended we should have done instead!
Yes if a school lacked the staff to open properly, then as a last resort it should go to remote learning, but if it could open properly then it should not.
The one comment that is true on that page is the caveat that Sweden did close late secondary schooling (grades 10+), I forgot that as I was thinking more about primary schooling and other earlier years were far more harm was done which is what we closed in the UK and they did not.
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
My mum still thinks the sun shines out of Johnsons arse. She got Nadines book for a Chritmas present, and not as an ironic read.
As we're apparently debating lockdown again, remember this. We had a choice - a controlled lockdown, or an uncontrolled shutdown.
We chose the former, with massive government support for jobs and companies.
Alternately we could have told people to keep calm and carry on. Covid tears massive holes in workplaces which shut themselves down due to a lack of healthy workers willing to take the risk. With no massive financial support and thus the rapid collapse of a whole stack of businesses big and small that summer.
I have no problem with people arguing against lockdown. But they need to recognise that there was no alternative scenario where things carry on as normal.
The latter is far, far better.
It's more liberal, letting people decide.
It's more flexible, letting people return when they're ready rather than waiting for permission.
Sweden had it uncontrolled but that didn't mean a lack of support. They had furlough etc like us, but it was voluntary rather than mandatory. Much, much better.
This is revisionism again. The retrospective right wing (not you) complaint against lockdown is the economic impact. The "why didn't we just let people decide" argument from the Tory right (not you) is that we could have avoided both lockdown and the economic costs.
In the scenario where we opt to "let it rip" there would have been no furlough. We can look at Sweden and say "we should have done that". But that wasn't our alternative. The Tory right think we wasted all that money on furlough. There is No Way they would have voluntarily proffered up the cash in an "everything carry on as normal" scenario.
Yes, we could.
Because Sweden's furlough was voluntary rather than mandatory, and people could do it for short-term rather than for months until the Government gave permission to return to work, it cost a tiny fraction of what our furlough cost.
The delta between what we spent and what we would have spent had we done a Swedish model was wasted money - as well as taking away our civil liberties.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
I'm not going to go any further. As the husband of a teaching assistant injured whilst apparently not working in a school which wasn't open whilst looking after pupils who weren't there, I will take your usual wankery under advisement.
"Open" is an absolute. Something is, or isn't. "Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open." - is Eton not open then?
Laughable.
Don't be stupid, schools are often open out of hours or during the holidays for limited number of people to attend clubs or whatever, but that's still out of hours and they're still considered closed at that time.
My children attend clubs afterschool, such as they were in the choir afterschool in the build-up to Christmas - during the times they were there in the choir but all other pupils were not present, was the school open in your eyes? Don't be silly. Indeed they advertise themselves as being shut at that time, if I put their school address into Google Maps when its time to pick them up, Google says the premises is closed at that time. Despite the fact they're present with my children.
If Eton were the only school and pupils of other schools had no school place then yes our schooling system would be closed to everyone not at Eton.
Instead we have universal education, which is open to all. Except during Covid, when schools were closed and not open to all their pupils.
Universal education is open to all children. If not all children have an education available to them, then our schooling is closed. Its not good enough to handwave it away by saying that a select privileged few have an education so that's fine, who needs universal education - and shame on you for even suggesting it!
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
My mum still thinks the sun shines out of Johnsons arse. She got Nadines book for a Chritmas present, and not as an ironic read.
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
My mum still thinks the sun shines out of Johnsons arse. She got Nadines book for a Chritmas present, and not as an ironic read.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
I'm not going to go any further. As the husband of a teaching assistant injured whilst apparently not working in a school which wasn't open whilst looking after pupils who weren't there, I will take your usual wankery under advisement.
"Open" is an absolute. Something is, or isn't. "Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open." - is Eton not open then?
Laughable.
Don't be stupid, schools are often open out of hours or during the holidays for limited number of people to attend clubs or whatever, but that's still out of hours and they're still considered closed at that time.
My children attend clubs afterschool, such as they were in the choir afterschool in the build-up to Christmas - during the times they were there in the choir but all other pupils were not present, was the school open in your eyes? Don't be silly. Indeed they advertise themselves as being shut at that time, if I put their school address into Google Maps when its time to pick them up, Google says the premises is closed at that time. Despite the fact they're present with my children.
If Eton were the only school and pupils of other schools had no school place then yes our schooling system would be closed to everyone not at Eton.
Instead we have universal education, which is open to all. Except during Covid, when schools were closed and not open to all their pupils.
Universal education is open to all children. If not all children have an education available to them, then our schooling is closed. Its not good enough to handwave it away by saying that a select privileged few have an education so that's fine, who needs universal education - and shame on you for even suggesting it!
Again with the pitiful strawman bullshit. You do yourself no favours when you dig yourself into a pit like this.
The problem for people who didn’t want us to leave the EU, who haven’t got over the referendum defeat and therefore hate Boris trying to make the case that he would be be doing worse than Sunak is that the opinion polls asking 2019 Tory voters who they’d prefer as leader constantly have him streets ahead of Sunak (and Truss when the question was asked)
My mum still thinks the sun shines out of Johnsons arse. She got Nadines book for a Chritmas present, and not as an ironic read.
Must make for some interesting conversations!
I’ve listened to The Plot on Audible (it wasn’t narrated by Nads thank God.)
I recommend it to all PBers it is an epic in unrequited love.
Back on topic, surely the positive for 2023 is the final demise of Boris Johnson as a political force. And not just the man (the legend) himself - his entire political coalition is done.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Of course there was an option to leave schools fully open. Sweden and many other nations around the planet did it.
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
Question - who would have been teaching these kids? So we have "a school" - and we know it wouldn't be singular - closing for "a week" and then reopening with no further issues, completely unimpeded.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Teachers would be teaching the kids. Same as in every other country in the planet that kept schools open.
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
Yes, you do keep saying that. But schools were not closed. So why do you keep saying that?
Because they were closed to millions of children.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Oh dear. Park the reframe out of the way. Being open is the same as being open. We have to have debate and political discourse based on facts. "Schools were closed" is false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not a fact.
It is a fact.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
I'm not going to go any further. As the husband of a teaching assistant injured whilst apparently not working in a school which wasn't open whilst looking after pupils who weren't there, I will take your usual wankery under advisement.
"Open" is an absolute. Something is, or isn't. "Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open." - is Eton not open then?
Laughable.
Don't be stupid, schools are often open out of hours or during the holidays for limited number of people to attend clubs or whatever, but that's still out of hours and they're still considered closed at that time.
My children attend clubs afterschool, such as they were in the choir afterschool in the build-up to Christmas - during the times they were there in the choir but all other pupils were not present, was the school open in your eyes? Don't be silly. Indeed they advertise themselves as being shut at that time, if I put their school address into Google Maps when its time to pick them up, Google says the premises is closed at that time. Despite the fact they're present with my children.
If Eton were the only school and pupils of other schools had no school place then yes our schooling system would be closed to everyone not at Eton.
Instead we have universal education, which is open to all. Except during Covid, when schools were closed and not open to all their pupils.
Universal education is open to all children. If not all children have an education available to them, then our schooling is closed. Its not good enough to handwave it away by saying that a select privileged few have an education so that's fine, who needs universal education - and shame on you for even suggesting it!
Again with the pitiful strawman bullshit. You do yourself no favours when you dig yourself into a pit like this.
No pit.
In this country we have universal education open to all, not a privileged few.
During Covid that was closed to most.
Yes it remained open for a few, nobody said otherwise, but for most children the school was closed to them.
Back on topic, surely the positive for 2023 is the final demise of Boris Johnson as a political force. And not just the man (the legend) himself - his entire political coalition is done.
It was never that clear what “Johnsonism” even was — perhaps that was part of the secret of his “charm” — but I think a political agenda of populism, centre right on social issues, fiscally conservative but willing to open the taps to “level up”, that still could get a lot of votes. But Johnson and the Tories more generally are no longer trusted to deliver anything.
Comments
Incidentally, the local primary and secondary schools are pretty near full, as is the GP surgery. The bus service to the nearest mainline railway station has recently been cut back.
The only reason that developers get a say is due to our broken planning system that gives consent to developments.
Abolish the requirement for planning consent and everyone could get whatever they want built on their own land, which cuts out developments and developers altogether. Countries like Japan that have done that houses (or blocks of flat) are built mostly individually rather than as "estates" by a solitary developer.
Likewise in other construction and industrial trades.
Which also provides a huge opportunity for any teenager who fancies a career in one of them.
The wealthier plan carefully. It's the most avoidable tax there is and keeps a number of impoverished Lincoln's Inn lawyers and accountants in shoes for their children.
Why not thousands of houses, on multiple estates, enabling prices to collapse?
Carefully omitting that the correct comparison, if one is a Tory-Approved Person with a Spouse all proper and Children, is £1m compared to the house and bits.
So many people have got the impression that IHT is three times more severe than it really is. They vote to ban it when they don't realise its banning will, if anything, be to their detriment (by relieving the richer folk of yet more tax).
I am not an expert but that seems unlikely to me.
How about we improve productivity, that could be a start? Remove barriers to competition too, that would help tremendously.
Labour need to be careful how they frame the argument over this . The best course of action IMO is to say now is not the right time as there are other pressing concerns , point out how few pay it and say they’ll conduct a review into IT , they shouldn’t say they’ll immediately reverse any cut .
I totally support new towns being built across the Northwest and elsewhere, I live in one myself.
And I totally support investment in new motorways etc to support those new towns.
Build lots of new motorways across the country, you'd improve infrastructure and transport connections to existing towns and enable the construction of new towns too. Win/win.
Incidentally, I've just been for a morning stroll along some of the new streets in Cambourne West. There are dozens of houses visually fully complete (including carpeting inside) that have not been moved into. I don't know if that's because they've been sold and no-one's moved in yet, or they have not been released by the builders.
It's a little eerie walking along a street of immaculate houses that are empty as the lack of signs of habitation are glaring. Although I pitied the deliveryman trying to find a house on a street that did not have a street sign and where the houses have signs saying "Plot number yyyy" rather than a house number...
I'm not sure those getting massive rent increases from leach landlords will appreciate the pearl-clutching of the "Englishman's castle" brigade.
Young people are desperate to get into their own homes, even if it's a flat like the impoverished Swiss. I, too, would like to live on a country estate with several thousand hectares, but that wouldn't do too much for housing supply.
I think the point is lockdown wasn't binary - we had 20-odd months of it to a greater or lesser extent. I will retreat to my point being we should have had less of itm Fewer closures and more normality.
#PBlogic
https://amp.theguardian.com/food/2020/dec/05/yotam-ottolenghi-alternative-christmas-dinner-recipes-roast-spatchcok-chicken-sprout-slaw-gruffalo-stuffing-cake-roast-sweet-potatoes-maple-lime
Eaten with freshly made cranberry sauce (I make mine with added whisky), it is a revelation.
Rebalance that to 10% and 65% and we could see a 100% increase in land available for housing stock with only a 7% reduction in land available for farming.
Enough extra land for housing for everyone to live in a decent sized detached or semi-detached home with a garden.
I'm wondering if the HBF figures incloude trainees/mates/assistants as well, which would drive it down to somethiong like the cited four a year.
Edit: clean forgot winter as JJ points out. And I'm sitting here wondering if I will be able to repair the patio brickwork at all without frost supervening ...
It was a choice to close schools. A bad, mistaken choice.
If a school lacked enough staff for a day or a week it could close for a day or a week as an emergency measure - without resulting in every other school in the country closing, and reopening within a day or a week rather than months later.
It isn't the disease that it was, in part it has mutated to being upper respiratory tract, and in part it is because we all have some immunity from vaccination or previous infection.
My folks went off on an anti-lockdown rant on Boxing Day. They watch too much GB News and read the Telegraph. They both have significant medical conditions and are in their Eighties, and would very likely be dead if they had caught it in 2020 or early 2021, rather than having cold turkey with their grandsons. I had to bite my tongue in the interests of Christmas peace to not point this out to them.
For a 'traditional' two-skin brick-or-block house, I think that seems about correct, although perhaps a little on the low side. Bricklaying can be quite a slow process, especially if you don't have a helper to fetch new hods of bricks (*) or mix/fetch mortar. And those helpers would count as bricklayers too. There are also times (e.g. frosty conditions) when you cannot easily lay bricks.
Which is why different construction techniques can make a big difference. Some of the new homes being built in CW have an interior wall of pre-constructed wooden panels, complete with insulation. These are craned in and the brickies then put a brick skin on the outside of it. That's much quicker than even breeze-block construction.
As another side note, I don't see brick hods being used any more. I assume they use telescopic handlers to lift the bricks up onto scaffolding now.
They seem to think that the public will swallow those attacks. This doesn’t show much confidence and they would be stupid to start watering down their Green plans .
Property prices aren't just about number of bedrooms. Flats in chic bits of Hackney are more expensive than my 1930s 3 bedroom house in Zone 6 are more expensive than bigger newbuilds in the sticks. If you believe in the market, those prices are signalling something important. Given a choice between a smaller home with life on your doorstep and a larger ranch with life a motorway drive away, there's more excess demand for the first.
Location, location, location, as the property shows say. Oh, and build quality as well.
There's a world of difference between saying 4 per year and 10 per year. Going at 10 per year the existing 42,000 bricklayers could build 420,000 houses per year.
Even if conditions are not optimal, making it 4 per year just does not pass the sniff test as being productive.
Improved competition and productivity would improve our housing market no end.
A healthy housing market would be producing the types of homes proportionate to the demand for the different types.
Whether it is or not I don't know.
In some places it might be impossible to provide all the housing demanded - in which case people will have to pay higher prices or relocate.
Their is a wonderful lightweight material called Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, which is cheap to produce and lightweight to build with.
Problem solved...
https://sipbuilduk.co.uk/what-are-sips/
Used appropriately, extremely effective.
Can simplify wiring runs, too.
Its nonsense. People would look at their colleagues and friends ancd family getting seriously ill, many ending up in completely swamped hospitals, some dying, and they would assess it was not worth the risk.
We get an uncontrolled shutdown. In schools instead of schools staying open - why do you keep saying they were closed - they would have closed, in an uncontrolled manner.
I know you disliked lockdown on ideological grounds. I disliked it on much more personal grounds as it nearly broke me. But this fantasy that you have where we just ignored the pox and carried on as normal is a fantasy.
Who we're told will have to suffer paying £200k IHT on a £1.5m inheritance.
Personally I wouldn't be bothered but then the chances of me inheriting £1.5m are nil.
"Amount of tax I pay, but what do I get for it? Bugger all."
This is as British as builders bottom.
4 per year absolutely passes the sniff test, especially as it depends on what the definition of 'bricklayer' is.
(Incidentally, decades ago when my dad was building, he only had a few specialised bricklayers. He had many more generalised labourers who could lay bricks - because they were so much more adaptable and useful. If needed, they could lay bricks (and especially blocks); any ornate or difficult work was left to the specialists. That may be different for larger housebuilders who might have large cadres of specialist bricklayers.)
Uncontrolled shutdowns are infinitely better as its individual schools for a couple of days, not total paralysis of every school for months on end.
I keep saying they were closed, because they were closed.
PS. Mind, leasehold law in England is pretty miserable. Might be a factor in the differential perception.
What media source would they prefer? And what source would they have which trumps the ABI about British Insurance costs?
Another factor is work availability: bricklaying is an early job in the construction process, but also relies on other tasks being completed, both before and during (e.g. footings, scaffolding etc). I bet it's very difficult keeping the pipeline of work for brickies full, especially on smaller sites.
In a UK flat, you don't own a single brick, yet are subject to absurd and often inflated service charges, and as the post-Grenfell era has demonstrated, would have more statutory rights if your car if it caught fire than you ever would trying to get the "owners" of the block you lease to pay up, as they're usually a shell company in the Bahamas...
Anyone who wants to build on any land zoned for housing should be able to do so, without seeking permission first - so long as whatever is built is built within predefined building codes. Which would include new construction as well as extensions, redevelopments, bulldozing and rebuilding pre-existing homes etc.
Giving permission to Barratt Homes for an entire estate then no other permission to anyone else gives Barratt Homes a monopoly position within that development to control it. Giving permission to an oligopoly of developers is not much better. Permission should exist for everyone at all times, automatically.
And IHT is a very psychological tax, its feared and resented rather than experienced.
To mix the issues being discussed this morning, IHT is a virus which few people get but are terrified of whereas income tax, national insurance, VAT etc are viruses which are endemic and everyone is continually infected by so that they rarely notice them.
This house has now been rendered and looks nice (in fact, I think it's been moved into) but what horrors lie underneath.
For anyone who says "it's rendered, it doesn't matter...", according to my friendly local plasterer, and my dad, the water and heat absorption of the different bricks will lead to cracking of the render well before the render's usual lifetime. It's also simply not doing a good job: if they cut corners like that, where else are they cutting corners?
Also, on the other side of Cambridge:
"Plans submitted to knock down 83 faulty new homes in Cambs"
https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/plans-submitted-knock-down-83-27783429
Failure to account for frost heave in the foundations, apparently...
Yes, it's not the drama queen it was but you still don't want it, esp if you're elderly. I was due to travel to my parents on Christmas Day, but woke up feeling just a bit 'off'. Normally I'd have ignored it but my dad is 90 and full time caring for my mum who's 88. so I did a Covid test. Positive. Trip cancelled.
I was pissed off but actually it's lucky I had a stock of tests and lucky that I decided to use one. If I'd gone ahead and given them the bug in their condition and circumstances, well you don't want that on your mental plate, do you.
Them being open to a select few is not the same as them being open.
I believe in a universal education, open to all. Don't you?
Another form of aerated concrete which RAAC has recently made famous...
Resignation and suicide would seem to be the obvious course of action
(Sam Freedman is certainly not my cup of tea. How he ever got to be a senior civil servant even with his father's help is something of a mystery.)
He became Conservative in middle age, but, as his sister told him, didn’t dare ‘come our’ while his father, an ex-miner, was still alive.
They were closed to the general public, but allowed a few in. That's closed.
Universal education is open to all, or its not universal education.
You can't be partially pregnant. Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open.
If a school opens its doors in the summer holidays to a few pupils doing activities do you count that as the school being open? 🤦♂️
https://twitter.com/PompeyDriver/status/1740294323122671722/photo/1
Fortunately the driver was uninjured.
A treasure trove of data and analysis in this FT article, explaining why leaseholders are second class citizens but only in England and Wales, where leasehold prevails. People are happy to live in flats elsewhere in the world, but also in Scotland, where commonhold is the norm, too. In England and Wales 95% of flats are leasehold. The above article makes it very clear that leasehold is to blame for our aversion to living in flats.
We could meet some of the demand for living in Mayfair by building tower blocks all over Hyde Park.
But that's not going to please others.
The situation is one of trade-offs between location, price, size, type, quality and other factors.
"Open" is an absolute. Something is, or isn't. "Either schools are open to all children, or they're not open." - is Eton not open then?
Laughable.
But lets take the few points it makes on its merits.
Schools were not mandated to close, unlike in the UK, but were instead allowed "to move to remote or hybrid learning in the event of outbreaks of staff issues". Which is precisely what I recommended we should have done instead!
Yes if a school lacked the staff to open properly, then as a last resort it should go to remote learning, but if it could open properly then it should not.
The one comment that is true on that page is the caveat that Sweden did close late secondary schooling (grades 10+), I forgot that as I was thinking more about primary schooling and other earlier years were far more harm was done which is what we closed in the UK and they did not.
My children attend clubs afterschool, such as they were in the choir afterschool in the build-up to Christmas - during the times they were there in the choir but all other pupils were not present, was the school open in your eyes? Don't be silly. Indeed they advertise themselves as being shut at that time, if I put their school address into Google Maps when its time to pick them up, Google says the premises is closed at that time. Despite the fact they're present with my children.
If Eton were the only school and pupils of other schools had no school place then yes our schooling system would be closed to everyone not at Eton.
Instead we have universal education, which is open to all. Except during Covid, when schools were closed and not open to all their pupils.
Universal education is open to all children. If not all children have an education available to them, then our schooling is closed. Its not good enough to handwave it away by saying that a select privileged few have an education so that's fine, who needs universal education - and shame on you for even suggesting it!
They even let me wear a yellow hard hat.
When I say helping out I mean observing.
I recommend it to all PBers it is an epic in unrequited love.
Also more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
In this country we have universal education open to all, not a privileged few.
During Covid that was closed to most.
Yes it remained open for a few, nobody said otherwise, but for most children the school was closed to them.
And demolitions sites. Though both were a long time ago, and not enough to in any way call myself an expert.