I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
But a lot of the food is shite compared to what you used to get. So that's not a fair comparison.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Why is this a surprise? Sir Keir will backtrack on absolutely anything to wriggle out of scrutiny, the list is endless
Maybe soon the Boris hater’s critical faculties will return & they’ll realise that Starmer is the biggest bluffer of them all
I’m just baffled at the way the whole thing has been handled . It just looks spineless . As for Reeves , don’t get me started !
How many times have they ditched this now?
Presume their focus groups are picking up major worries with swing voters about this £28b number but personally I am starting to wonder what's the point of changing the government if they both agree on every bloody thing.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
The latest BBC push notification is disastrous for the government:
"The suspect in an alkali attack in south London was convicted of a sex offence in 2018 and was later granted asylum"
Starmer could make a major move here: announce a Labour government will split the Home Office, taking away any role with border security, asylum processing, deportations etc etc and putting all that in a new Cabinet-level department.
Not fit for purpose.
Away from politics, that also happens to make sense. Chuck in the fire brigade, Coast Guard and merge it with Border Force, and think about chucking in MI5 and CT/organised crime policing (the operation of). A Homeland Security Dpt.
Home Office defines the law, and oversees mainstream policing.
You can have that one for free Yvette, if you’re reading.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
The latest BBC push notification is disastrous for the government:
"The suspect in an alkali attack in south London was convicted of a sex offence in 2018 and was later granted asylum"
That’s appalling. How on earth can you be granted asylum if you’ve been convicted of an offence.
Where in the law does it say the right to asylum doesn't apply to criminals?
Generally you try to stay on the right side of the law if you’re hoping to be able to stay in the UK .
I’m very welcoming to those who are law abiding and that’s my attitude to immigration . As long as people are good citizens then I’m very pro immigration . If not they can bugger off .
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
I agree to a certain extent, and I believe that's @NickPalmer 's view. But we in Britain are culturally against flats, for good and bad reasons. The tragedies of the 60s and 70s politically-led tower-block designs cast a long shadow.
for us in Britain, the 'ideal' is a detached house with sizable garden and garage, not a small flat in Nelson Mandela House. And how do you change that ideal, given the history?
Former Afghan special forces who served alongside the British but were denied relocation to the UK will have their cases re-examined, the government says.
Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said ineligible applications with credible claims of links to Afghan specialist units would be reassessed.
The so-called "Triples" were elite units set up, funded and run by the UK.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
You're completely wrong. How much does insulation cost as percentage of a house? Bugger all, and most of the cost of that bugger all is labour.
How much does land cost as a percentage of a house?
You're quibbling with irrelevancies while ignoring the big picture. You can have well-built, affordable, plentiful homes.
Indeed in countries that have liberated the planning system, that is exactly what happens. Better-built homes outcompete slum crap that people can reliably let out in the UK because there's no threat of competition.
Insulation can cost a lot, both in terms of substance, installation and design. And add in all the other legislation as well. It all adds up.
But that's the killer; all those things are justifiable. Building homes outside city centres without electric car chargers nowadays is madness. Yet they cost.
Do you have reliable sources for your claims about other countries? Because I bet there are plenty of other factors in play. And as an aside, I've been stating the poor quality of new-build houses on here for many, many years. Including pictures...
No-one's building new land.
You don't need to build new land, we have plenty of land. All the housing in the entire frigging country, every home and every garden too, fits into less than 5% of the land of this country.
What we don't have is enough land with planning consent. Hence why land with planning consent can suddenly be worth thousands times much than land without it.
Abolish that anomaly, ensure land is worth the same either way, and the price of housing would fall accordingly.
Insulation etc is not that big of a cost compared to that, its miniscule.
And yes, for an example of a country that liberated planning and saw build-quality improve while housing is affordable look for example at Tokyo (where the population has risen despite Japan's demographics).
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
Even if there’s a war the tech companies will be crucial, if Trump wins I can’t see that harming US tech either. I know these shares have already risen a lot but I see them rising further for quite a while
Am i wrong?
I wouldn’t be in a rush. Tech valuations are pretty bubbly at the moment.
Btw if you have Disney+, Shop for Killers is pretty entertaining. I know you don’t mind a bit of gore, and it’s more intelligent than the usual fare.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
In 1943, IBM estimated a *global* market of 5 computers.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Things can only get better go on as they are.
The biggest problem with Labour is that they are going to reopen the flood gates on low skill immigration.
reopen ? REOPEN ?!?
Yes, the Tories closed the EU one with ending FoM and have finally closed the non-EU one with the new income thresholds. Will Labour roll back? I bet they do as they are very silent on the topic. Starmer should be asked.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Things can only get better go on as they are.
The biggest problem with Labour is that they are going to reopen the flood gates on low skill immigration.
reopen ? REOPEN ?!?
Indeed.
14 years they have had of shouting that immigration is a disaster and we will keep to around 10Ks a year.
Year in and year out.
Either this kind of migration isn't a disaster or it is and they have utterly failed.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
In 1943, IBM estimated a *global* market of 5 computers.
Not per year: in total.
See Space 1999, made in the mid 70s, where MoonBase Alpha has a giant computer and people still use typewriters.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Things can only get better go on as they are.
The biggest problem with Labour is that they are going to reopen the flood gates on low skill immigration.
reopen ? REOPEN ?!?
Indeed.
14 years they have had of shouting that immigration is a disaster and we will keep to around 10Ks a year.
Year in and year out.
Either this kind of migration isn't a disaster or it is and they have utterly failed.
Either way the Tories have completed failed.
Yes, historic policy of Freedom of Movement was a huge mistake. So was the Boris reduction of thresholds on "skilled" visas. But Sunak's new policy has no FoM, much tighter restrictions on skilled visas, and finally does something about family migration. It is very good.
Will Starmer keep with it? Or will he return to the policies behind the years of failure?
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
100 years ago my grandfather raised 8 children in a 3-bedroom terrace house on a railwayman's wage. My other grandfather did likewise on a steelworker's wage. It would take a big book to explain all the changes for good or evil that have affected working class life in the meantime. There was no state support, families looked after each other without question, no-one expected much out of life and very occasionally someone (in this case, me) managed to escape. That world has gone. Deregulated planning will not bring it back.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
You're completely wrong. How much does insulation cost as percentage of a house? Bugger all, and most of the cost of that bugger all is labour.
How much does land cost as a percentage of a house?
You're quibbling with irrelevancies while ignoring the big picture. You can have well-built, affordable, plentiful homes.
Indeed in countries that have liberated the planning system, that is exactly what happens. Better-built homes outcompete slum crap that people can reliably let out in the UK because there's no threat of competition.
Insulation can cost a lot, both in terms of substance, installation and design. And add in all the other legislation as well. It all adds up.
But that's the killer; all those things are justifiable. Building homes outside city centres without electric car chargers nowadays is madness. Yet they cost.
Do you have reliable sources for your claims about other countries? Because I bet there are plenty of other factors in play. And as an aside, I've been stating the poor quality of new-build houses on here for many, many years. Including pictures...
No-one's building new land.
You don't need to build new land, we have plenty of land. All the housing in the entire frigging country, every home and every garden too, fits into less than 5% of the land of this country.
What we don't have is enough land with planning consent. Hence why land with planning consent can suddenly be worth thousands times much than land without it.
Abolish that anomaly, ensure land is worth the same either way, and the price of housing would fall accordingly.
Insulation etc is not that big of a cost compared to that, its miniscule.
And yes, for an example of a country that liberated planning and saw build-quality improve while housing is affordable look for example at Tokyo (where the population has risen despite Japan's demographics).
There are other factors that you ignore. For instance:
*) where do people *want* to live. Most need to be near potential places of work. They want a choice, and that means we cannot live in Scourie, however much I'd like to. And that leads to:
*) Infrastructure. It's not just about houses and gardens; it's about roads. And shops. And car parking. And rail (yes, I said it...). And water. And sewage. And power. And schools. And all those 'little' things you forget about.
Your dream is rather Communist: have people live where they are told to live, in the places they are told to live, in the houses they are told to live...
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
Yes it's a 3-bed house. The DWP rules (used to calculate the rent UC will allow) say such a family is allowed a 3-bed home.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
In 1943, IBM estimated a *global* market of 5 computers.
Not per year: in total.
That was for 1943 tech computers, though. Which probably wasn’t all that wrong.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
You're completely wrong. How much does insulation cost as percentage of a house? Bugger all, and most of the cost of that bugger all is labour.
How much does land cost as a percentage of a house?
You're quibbling with irrelevancies while ignoring the big picture. You can have well-built, affordable, plentiful homes.
Indeed in countries that have liberated the planning system, that is exactly what happens. Better-built homes outcompete slum crap that people can reliably let out in the UK because there's no threat of competition.
Insulation can cost a lot, both in terms of substance, installation and design. And add in all the other legislation as well. It all adds up.
But that's the killer; all those things are justifiable. Building homes outside city centres without electric car chargers nowadays is madness. Yet they cost.
Do you have reliable sources for your claims about other countries? Because I bet there are plenty of other factors in play. And as an aside, I've been stating the poor quality of new-build houses on here for many, many years. Including pictures...
No-one's building new land.
You don't need to build new land, we have plenty of land. All the housing in the entire frigging country, every home and every garden too, fits into less than 5% of the land of this country.
What we don't have is enough land with planning consent. Hence why land with planning consent can suddenly be worth thousands times much than land without it.
Abolish that anomaly, ensure land is worth the same either way, and the price of housing would fall accordingly.
Insulation etc is not that big of a cost compared to that, its miniscule.
And yes, for an example of a country that liberated planning and saw build-quality improve while housing is affordable look for example at Tokyo (where the population has risen despite Japan's demographics).
There are other factors that you ignore. For instance:
*) where do people *want* to live. Most need to be near potential places of work. They want a choice, and that means we cannot live in Scourie, however much I'd like to. And that leads to:
*) Infrastructure. It's not just about houses and gardens; it's about roads. And shops. And car parking. And rail (yes, I said it...). And water. And sewage. And power. And schools. And all those 'little' things you forget about.
Your dream is rather Communist: have people live where they are told to live, in the places they are told to live, in the houses they are told to live...
My dream is the polar opposite, it is let them live where they choose to live, build what they want, where they want.
That people can do whatever they want with their own land, except for areas deemed not suitable for construction (as opposed to only allowing construction when and where it is permitted).
I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it.
The attitude that "everything that is not forbidden, is permitted" rather than the current law that "everything that is not permitted, is forbidden".
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
???
You said; "I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable. "
I responded that means kids would have to share, which for some reason is seen as a bad thing?
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
Even if there’s a war the tech companies will be crucial, if Trump wins I can’t see that harming US tech either. I know these shares have already risen a lot but I see them rising further for quite a while
Am i wrong?
Might be worth keeping an ear out for some not-quite-ready AI companies like Mistral, Rain & Perplexity - or even some of the moonshot fusion start-ups. Don't think you can invest in them yet unless you have a few million to spare in seed rounds though.
Google I'm really not sure about. Nvidia, Amazon, MS at least have concrete products. Feels like Google is eating itself from the inside - both technology-wise and corporate politics-wise.
I wouldn't be *too* negative on Google, they have - after all - got the world's number one TV station (for which they don't need to pay for content), the world's number one mobile phone operating system, the number one provider of email and calendar to businesses, the number one provider of cloud computing and there's a little search business in there too.
If I was going to be negative on one of them, I think it would probably be Microsoft, which is at the tail end of the whole "convert everyone to subscriptions" cycle. Because Microsoft has no presence in mobile, is losing share in regular compute, and more and more businesses are going down the Google Docs is good enough for me route.
Nvidia I love as a company, but it's already priced to quadruple in size. Which I'm sure it will do. But that's a lot of the future growth already in the share price.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
???
You said; "I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable. "
I responded that means kids would have to share, which for some reason is seen as a bad thing?
I never said it was a bad thing, indeed the opposite! I said a 3 bed rented property between 6 was not unreasonable.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
100 years ago my grandfather raised 8 children in a 3-bedroom terrace house on a railwayman's wage. My other grandfather did likewise on a steelworker's wage. It would take a big book to explain all the changes for good or evil that have affected working class life in the meantime. There was no state support, families looked after each other without question, no-one expected much out of life and very occasionally someone (in this case, me) managed to escape. That world has gone. Deregulated planning will not bring it back.
My grandfather was one of 11. They did not receive state support or government housing. And my grandfather went on to have a very successful life and was a well-rounded good man. I am sure the family of six can cope. If the parents find it tough, they might think ablut having more kids. Of the kids grow up and resent their upbringing, they can blame the decisions of their parents.
He may get devoted acolytes who love him, but he's toxic to everyone else and for everyone he attracts to the party he attracts more to the opposition to ensure he isn't elected.
If the GOP is crazy enough to nominate Trump again, they deserve to lose - again.
Hopefully a second defeat will be enough to knock some common sense into them. If not, let them keep learning the lesson until they do.
He isn't like Corbyn, more's the pity.
This poll is a total outlier, most show him ahead, and crucially, well ahead in States like Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Neavada.
The poll is not a total outlier, it is completely consistent with the "which one would you vote for, Trump or Biden" polls.
If you ask, "which one would you vote for, Trump, Biden, Kennedy, or Stein", then Biden drops about ten points, thanks to Kennedy and Stein.
Which is why RFK's campaign is being bankrolled by some prominent MAGAites.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
100 years ago my grandfather raised 8 children in a 3-bedroom terrace house on a railwayman's wage. My other grandfather did likewise on a steelworker's wage. It would take a big book to explain all the changes for good or evil that have affected working class life in the meantime. There was no state support, families looked after each other without question, no-one expected much out of life and very occasionally someone (in this case, me) managed to escape. That world has gone. Deregulated planning will not bring it back.
100 years ago your grandfather was paying a tiny fraction for housing and land was 2% of the value of a home.
Today the number one bill in families budgets is housing, dwarfing all other costs, and much of that is the artificially inflated value of land caused exclusively by the planning system.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
You're completely wrong. How much does insulation cost as percentage of a house? Bugger all, and most of the cost of that bugger all is labour.
How much does land cost as a percentage of a house?
You're quibbling with irrelevancies while ignoring the big picture. You can have well-built, affordable, plentiful homes.
Indeed in countries that have liberated the planning system, that is exactly what happens. Better-built homes outcompete slum crap that people can reliably let out in the UK because there's no threat of competition.
Insulation can cost a lot, both in terms of substance, installation and design. And add in all the other legislation as well. It all adds up.
But that's the killer; all those things are justifiable. Building homes outside city centres without electric car chargers nowadays is madness. Yet they cost.
Do you have reliable sources for your claims about other countries? Because I bet there are plenty of other factors in play. And as an aside, I've been stating the poor quality of new-build houses on here for many, many years. Including pictures...
No-one's building new land.
You don't need to build new land, we have plenty of land. All the housing in the entire frigging country, every home and every garden too, fits into less than 5% of the land of this country.
What we don't have is enough land with planning consent. Hence why land with planning consent can suddenly be worth thousands times much than land without it.
Abolish that anomaly, ensure land is worth the same either way, and the price of housing would fall accordingly.
Insulation etc is not that big of a cost compared to that, its miniscule.
And yes, for an example of a country that liberated planning and saw build-quality improve while housing is affordable look for example at Tokyo (where the population has risen despite Japan's demographics).
There are other factors that you ignore. For instance:
*) where do people *want* to live. Most need to be near potential places of work. They want a choice, and that means we cannot live in Scourie, however much I'd like to. And that leads to:
*) Infrastructure. It's not just about houses and gardens; it's about roads. And shops. And car parking. And rail (yes, I said it...). And water. And sewage. And power. And schools. And all those 'little' things you forget about.
Your dream is rather Communist: have people live where they are told to live, in the places they are told to live, in the houses they are told to live...
My dream is the polar opposite, it is let them live where they choose to live, build what they want, where they want.
That people can do whatever they want with their own land, except for areas deemed not suitable for construction (as opposed to only allowing construction when and where it is permitted).
I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it.
The attitude that "everything that is not forbidden, is permitted" rather than the current law that "everything that is not permitted, is forbidden".
People need to work. People need to be near friends and family. That automatically increases the value of some land, and decreases the value of others. The idea that all land is somehow similarly valuable is odd.
"I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it."
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
100 years ago my grandfather raised 8 children in a 3-bedroom terrace house on a railwayman's wage. My other grandfather did likewise on a steelworker's wage. It would take a big book to explain all the changes for good or evil that have affected working class life in the meantime. There was no state support, families looked after each other without question, no-one expected much out of life and very occasionally someone (in this case, me) managed to escape. That world has gone. Deregulated planning will not bring it back.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Things can only get better go on as they are.
The biggest problem with Labour is that they are going to reopen the flood gates on low skill immigration.
reopen ? REOPEN ?!?
Indeed.
14 years they have had of shouting that immigration is a disaster and we will keep to around 10Ks a year.
Year in and year out.
Either this kind of migration isn't a disaster or it is and they have utterly failed.
Either way the Tories have completed failed.
They completely succeeded in providing low paid workers which is what many wanted.
If they wanted to reduce immigration, as well as give an incentive to improve productivity, then migrant workers should have come with a requirement to be paid 20% more than the going rate rather than allowed to come and be paid 20% less than the going rate.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
100 years ago my grandfather raised 8 children in a 3-bedroom terrace house on a railwayman's wage. My other grandfather did likewise on a steelworker's wage. It would take a big book to explain all the changes for good or evil that have affected working class life in the meantime. There was no state support, families looked after each other without question, no-one expected much out of life and very occasionally someone (in this case, me) managed to escape. That world has gone. Deregulated planning will not bring it back.
100 years ago your grandfather was paying a tiny fraction for housing and land was 2% of the value of a home.
Today the number one bill in families budgets is housing, dwarfing all other costs, and much of that is the artificially inflated value of land caused exclusively by the planning system.
The number of residences has dramatically increased over recent decades. The issue is poor immigration policies have increased population even faster.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
You're completely wrong. How much does insulation cost as percentage of a house? Bugger all, and most of the cost of that bugger all is labour.
How much does land cost as a percentage of a house?
You're quibbling with irrelevancies while ignoring the big picture. You can have well-built, affordable, plentiful homes.
Indeed in countries that have liberated the planning system, that is exactly what happens. Better-built homes outcompete slum crap that people can reliably let out in the UK because there's no threat of competition.
Insulation can cost a lot, both in terms of substance, installation and design. And add in all the other legislation as well. It all adds up.
But that's the killer; all those things are justifiable. Building homes outside city centres without electric car chargers nowadays is madness. Yet they cost.
Do you have reliable sources for your claims about other countries? Because I bet there are plenty of other factors in play. And as an aside, I've been stating the poor quality of new-build houses on here for many, many years. Including pictures...
No-one's building new land.
You don't need to build new land, we have plenty of land. All the housing in the entire frigging country, every home and every garden too, fits into less than 5% of the land of this country.
What we don't have is enough land with planning consent. Hence why land with planning consent can suddenly be worth thousands times much than land without it.
Abolish that anomaly, ensure land is worth the same either way, and the price of housing would fall accordingly.
Insulation etc is not that big of a cost compared to that, its miniscule.
And yes, for an example of a country that liberated planning and saw build-quality improve while housing is affordable look for example at Tokyo (where the population has risen despite Japan's demographics).
There are other factors that you ignore. For instance:
*) where do people *want* to live. Most need to be near potential places of work. They want a choice, and that means we cannot live in Scourie, however much I'd like to. And that leads to:
*) Infrastructure. It's not just about houses and gardens; it's about roads. And shops. And car parking. And rail (yes, I said it...). And water. And sewage. And power. And schools. And all those 'little' things you forget about.
Your dream is rather Communist: have people live where they are told to live, in the places they are told to live, in the houses they are told to live...
My dream is the polar opposite, it is let them live where they choose to live, build what they want, where they want.
That people can do whatever they want with their own land, except for areas deemed not suitable for construction (as opposed to only allowing construction when and where it is permitted).
I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it.
The attitude that "everything that is not forbidden, is permitted" rather than the current law that "everything that is not permitted, is forbidden".
People need to work. People need to be near friends and family. That automatically increases the value of some land, and decreases the value of others. The idea that all land is somehow similarly valuable is odd.
"I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it."
Regardless of the impact it has on other people?
Land is inflated due to planning permission often a thousand-fold. That's not magically moving friends and family nearby, its the planning system that does that.
As for whether people should be able to do what they want regardless of the impact it has on other people, yes, within the law. Because if you're within the law, its not really impacting other people.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
???
You said; "I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable. "
I responded that means kids would have to share, which for some reason is seen as a bad thing?
I never said it was a bad thing, indeed the opposite! I said a 3 bed rented property between 6 was not unreasonable.
Are you sure you don't have an unwanted 'not' in there? For I'm sure some argue that kids (even of the same gender) sharing bedrooms was a bad thing?
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Why is this a surprise? Sir Keir will backtrack on absolutely anything to wriggle out of scrutiny, the list is endless
Maybe soon the Boris hater’s critical faculties will return & they’ll realise that Starmer is the biggest bluffer of them all
I’m just baffled at the way the whole thing has been handled . It just looks spineless . As for Reeves , don’t get me started !
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
I agree to a certain extent, and I believe that's @NickPalmer 's view. But we in Britain are culturally against flats, for good and bad reasons. The tragedies of the 60s and 70s politically-led tower-block designs cast a long shadow.
for us in Britain, the 'ideal' is a detached house with sizable garden and garage, not a small flat in Nelson Mandela House. And how do you change that ideal, given the history?
If you're serious about reducing housing pressure in our cities you have no choice.
I do have one doubt - there is a snowball effect of economic growth and housing costs in our cities which is stimulated by population growth. We are always going to have this problem as cities become relatively more attractive. This is more obvious in Scotland, where our population has flatlined yet prices in Lothian have rocketed.
Another way to reduce housing pressure would be to encourage growth in provincial towns and rural areas, spreading demand around more evenly. Then you might have more chance of "the ideal", particularly with lots of industrial waste ground in places like Greenock/Middlesbrough etc
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
???
You said; "I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable. "
I responded that means kids would have to share, which for some reason is seen as a bad thing?
I never said it was a bad thing, indeed the opposite! I said a 3 bed rented property between 6 was not unreasonable.
Are you sure you don't have an unwanted 'not' in there? For I'm sure some argue that kids (even of the same gender) sharing bedrooms was a bad thing?
You now seem to be accusing people of not saying the things they shouldn't have said.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
100 years ago my grandfather raised 8 children in a 3-bedroom terrace house on a railwayman's wage. My other grandfather did likewise on a steelworker's wage. It would take a big book to explain all the changes for good or evil that have affected working class life in the meantime. There was no state support, families looked after each other without question, no-one expected much out of life and very occasionally someone (in this case, me) managed to escape. That world has gone. Deregulated planning will not bring it back.
100 years ago your grandfather was paying a tiny fraction for housing and land was 2% of the value of a home.
Today the number one bill in families budgets is housing, dwarfing all other costs, and much of that is the artificially inflated value of land caused exclusively by the planning system.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
from 6, I might reasonably assume a couple and four kids. In which case it seems that every kid needs their own bedroom (sharing bedrooms is apparently bad). Meaning a five bedroom place for such a family.
But that is not what this family have. It is specified as a 3 bed house, so presumably 2 per bedroom, or possibly 3 and one depending on the gender split of the kids. Or do you think 1 or 2 bedrooms are fine for such a family?
???
You said; "I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable. "
I responded that means kids would have to share, which for some reason is seen as a bad thing?
I never said it was a bad thing, indeed the opposite! I said a 3 bed rented property between 6 was not unreasonable.
Are you sure you don't have an unwanted 'not' in there? For I'm sure some argue that kids (even of the same gender) sharing bedrooms was a bad thing?
No. "not unreasonable" is the same as reasonable. What this family have, and are threatened to lose, is a 3 bed property between 6 which seems a reasonable, even modest aspiration.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
I agree to a certain extent, and I believe that's @NickPalmer 's view. But we in Britain are culturally against flats, for good and bad reasons. The tragedies of the 60s and 70s politically-led tower-block designs cast a long shadow.
for us in Britain, the 'ideal' is a detached house with sizable garden and garage, not a small flat in Nelson Mandela House. And how do you change that ideal, given the history?
If you're serious about reducing housing pressure in our cities you have no choice.
I do have one doubt - there is a snowball effect of economic growth and housing costs in our cities which is stimulated by population growth. We are always going to have this problem as cities become relatively more attractive. This is more obvious in Scotland, where our population has flatlined yet prices in Lothian have rocketed.
Another way to reduce housing pressure would be to encourage growth in provincial towns and rural areas, spreading demand around more evenly. Then you might have more chance of "the ideal", particularly with lots of industrial waste ground in places like Greenock/Middlesbrough etc
Abolish planning restraints and you can do both, easily.
Have people able to raze their own land in cities and rebuild it as flats if they want.
Have people able to raze whatever they want in Middlesbrough and build a decent home if they want.
Or any combination inbetween.
The key is to get the "everything we haven't permitted is forbidden" attitude flipped on its head and then let people decide.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
Do you know what be more affordable on that plot of and?
A detached house with a two-car garage /s
You can get a detached house with two-car garage cheaper than that near where I live, yes - and that's with our current planning system inflating costs.
Liberate the system and let people decide. Inner city flat, or suburban home, or whatever they want - all affordable so they're choosing based on preference rather than compulsion.
Neither you nor I should be making anyone else's choice for them. Set it free, and let everyone decide for themselves.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
But, as a sharp thinker here has pointed out, that has naff all to to with the cost of those flats, it's pure supply and demand.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
But, as a sharp thinker here has pointed out, that has naff all to to with the cost of those flats, it's pure supply and demand.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
The inability to construct more is precisely the supply problem, yes.
Nationwide the price signals that people prefer detached homes, then semi-detached homes, with terraces being the least preferable houses of all. And flats even less popular than terraces.
The idea that denser living is popular is not remotely based on any facts or evidence. Inner-city living may be popular for some, but in like-for-like areas people will prefer more space for themselves without others.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
But, as a sharp thinker here has pointed out, that has naff all to to with the cost of those flats, it's pure supply and demand.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
The one I love is that the hovel occupied by poor Bob Cratchett in Camden now retails at £1m+.
Some sickening footage in the Channel 4 Miners' strike documentary from the Orgreave police tactics.
Extraordinary testimony from police that they were ordered to lie, and it bears out what those QC's who've been saying there should have been public enquiry on this for years , have pointed to. There's still time for a proper enquiry.
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Some sickening footage in the Channel 4 Miners' strike documentary from the Orgreave police tactics.
Extraordinary testimony police that they were ordered to lie, and it bears out what those QC's who've been saying there should have been public enquiry into this, years ago, have pointed to. There still should be,
Loads of police all over the country made a killing in overtime etc during th3 strikes. My dad (30 years service) tells me many bought cars that they nicknamed ‘Arthur’ in gratitude to Scargill.
I don’t condone what the police did. However the miners were trying to rule the country and bring down elected governments. It was, pretty much, a civil war.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
We need a huge increase in housebuilding the last estimate I saw is that we are missing 5 million+ homes - but we can't hike the minimum wage because when I look at the forthcoming increase it's at the point where it's once again dragging the next tier of jobs into minimum wage territory.
And the problem with that is?
If a skilled job pays the same as a minimum wage job it undermines the incentive to invest in training yourself up so hinders productivity growth
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
But, as a sharp thinker here has pointed out, that has naff all to to with the cost of those flats, it's pure supply and demand.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
The one I love is that the hovel occupied by poor Bob Cratchett in Camden now retails at £1m+.
As Phil and Kirstie used to say, Location Location Location. Which requires sufficient people close enough together for a place to be a Location.
That doesn't have to be Camden, but I think the evidence that a typical modern development goes too far the other way is pretty convincing. People are on average willing to pay more to live in a smaller house Somewhere a bigger house Nowhere. And recent development patterns have tended to create too many Nowheres.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
But, as a sharp thinker here has pointed out, that has naff all to to with the cost of those flats, it's pure supply and demand.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
The one I love is that the hovel occupied by poor Bob Cratchett in Camden now retails at £1m+.
Hardly a hovel - the Cratchetts were respectable lower middle class.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
We need a huge increase in housebuilding the last estimate I saw is that we are missing 5 million+ homes - but we can't hike the minimum wage because when I look at the forthcoming increase it's at the point where it's once again dragging the next tier of jobs into minimum wage territory.
And the problem with that is?
If a skilled job pays the same as a minimum wage job it undermines the incentive to invest in training yourself up so hinders productivity growth
...which means there's a shortage of those with the skills which means the rate has to go up.
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
Even if there’s a war the tech companies will be crucial, if Trump wins I can’t see that harming US tech either. I know these shares have already risen a lot but I see them rising further for quite a while
Am i wrong?
Frequently.
Look where the FAANGS were last year. Then the year before that. They are up and down faster than a bookers drawers.
Buy a diversified portfolio and hold it for the long term. You are closer to retirement than you like to believe.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
Partially yes, but partially no.
If housing cost the same as it used to in the past, then household budgets would be a lot more relieved without giving them any further subsidies.
It is the draconian cost of housing that eats up too much of too many people's budgets.
Sure, if you want housing to be the same as it was in the past. Outside privies. Two families in a house, No gardens. Garage? You're having a laugh. The heating is the downstairs fireplace.
If you want 'better' housing, it'll cost more. every regulation we add onto housing legislation improves housing, but increases cost.
I don't know what the answer is.
That's absurd and illogical thinking.
Quality improves over time without increasing cost. TVs, computers and much more cost a tiny fraction (in real terms) of what they did, while being much better quality. Its not just technology, food nowadays costs a quarter of what it did in the seventies, while improving tremendously in the availability of variety and quality (even if some people choose crap).
Housing isn't expensive due to build costs, housing is expensive due to the artificially high cost of land and the lack of competition due to the planning system. Prior to the introduction of the requirement of planning consent, land was just 2% of the cost of a house - go back to that, and the cost of housing would plummet and people would be able to afford a better standard of living without any extra income.
It is those trying to sweat the value of land to earn an income who are causing misery. That unearned income has to come from somewhere.
I think you're wrong. The things you mention improved performance and simultaneously decreased cost due to the *quantity* being sold. Back in the early 1980s, the government started a scheme that said we would have a computer in every school. That is *one computer in every school of a few hundred pupils. That made the fortunes (temporarily) of a computer company. Now most people carry one or two computers around with them all the time (in my case, phone and watch).
We are talking orders of magnitude increases in production. 230 billion ARM chips have been made in the last forty years, and that sort of volume increases quality/performance and reduces cost. Housing is in no way scalable in the same manner.
Housing absolutely is scalable, indeed its been done around the globe.
Contrast the value of land with planning consent with the value without it. That delta is purely artificial and entirely due to the planning system, abolish it and you abolish that delta, you abolish that cost altogether.
Housing is not scalable in the same way, and it's ridiculous to say it is. As I said, *billions* of ARM chips alone have been sold. 25 billion in 2020 alone. Comparing housing to that is... odd, for obvious reasons.
I never said scalable in the same way, nor does it need to be, it just needs to be scalable and it is.
As I gave as an initial example, food has come down by 75% in cost since the 70s, that's not scaled like ARM has.
Housing costs never used to be this expensive either, land never used to be this expensive, they are expensive solely because its scaled less than population has. If it scaled more than population does, then prices would collapse in real terms, which would be great news for all except those trying to sweat land for unearned wealth and income.
It's nowhere near scalable enough, especially as the *quality* of what we rightly want increases. we want *better* housing, and that invariably costs more. Better insulation? it costs. Electric car chargers outside every new house? They cost.
Usable land is finite; we rightly want better quality housing on the land. The 'quality' of the food has not increased massively since the 1970s; the places we are buying it from worldwide may have.
I agree that planning is an issue; I just see that there are many other barriers to 'affordable' housing. Changing demographics, immigration, desires, legislation... they are all factors. And good luck in changing most of them. There's no way I'd touch a timber-framed mass-produced house, for instance, after the disasters in the 1980s.
It is scalable. How do you provide more housing and services with less land, fewer building materials, more efficient transport options and lower running costs?
Flats.
Yes slums are scalable cheaply, but deal with the way the planning system warps competition and inflates the value of land and real actual homes can be built for cheaper instead.
Stop this obsession of cramming people into slum flats instead of actual houses.
But, as a sharp thinker here has pointed out, that has naff all to to with the cost of those flats, it's pure supply and demand.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
The one I love is that the hovel occupied by poor Bob Cratchett in Camden now retails at £1m+.
As Phil and Kirstie used to say, Location Location Location. Which requires sufficient people close enough together for a place to be a Location.
That doesn't have to be Camden, but I think the evidence that a typical modern development goes too far the other way is pretty convincing. People are on average willing to pay more to live in a smaller house Somewhere a bigger house Nowhere. And recent development patterns have tended to create too many Nowheres.
What evidence?
Quite the opposite, the evidence is that all developments are snapped up due to a chronic shortage of housing.
Homes getting developed then left idle as nobody wants them is not happening.
Some sickening footage in the Channel 4 Miners' strike documentary from the Orgreave police tactics.
Extraordinary testimony police that they were ordered to lie, and it bears out what those QC's who've been saying there should have been public enquiry into this, years ago, have pointed to. There still should be,
Loads of police all over the country made a killing in overtime etc during th3 strikes. My dad (30 years service) tells me many bought cars that they nicknamed ‘Arthur’ in gratitude to Scargill.
I don’t condone what the police did. However the miners were trying to rule the country and bring down elected governments. It was, pretty much, a civil war.
Well, that may have been the case in terms of Scargill's own personal ambitions, but many of the miners beaten to a pulp by various police forces, who then lied about it, had no similar ones.
The film really illustrates once again what a dreadfully and unnecessarily polarising figure Thatcher was, whatever else she managed to achieve. The postindustral transition could have been managed in a much more humane way, as the SDP/Liberal Alliance would have done.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
We need a huge increase in housebuilding the last estimate I saw is that we are missing 5 million+ homes - but we can't hike the minimum wage because when I look at the forthcoming increase it's at the point where it's once again dragging the next tier of jobs into minimum wage territory.
And the problem with that is?
If a skilled job pays the same as a minimum wage job it undermines the incentive to invest in training yourself up so hinders productivity growth
...which means there's a shortage of those with the skills which means the rate has to go up.
Unless you bring in another load of migrant workers because the 'locals aren't willing to do the work'.
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
We need a huge increase in housebuilding the last estimate I saw is that we are missing 5 million+ homes - but we can't hike the minimum wage because when I look at the forthcoming increase it's at the point where it's once again dragging the next tier of jobs into minimum wage territory.
And the problem with that is?
If a skilled job pays the same as a minimum wage job it undermines the incentive to invest in training yourself up so hinders productivity growth
...which means there's a shortage of those with the skills which means the rate has to go up.
... until industry can't afford it and they decide to do without the workers and associated output instead.
The private sector isn't a bottomless pit of other people's money, ready to be plundered for dubious social goals. It's a fragile ecosystem that needs a special set of conditions (low taxes, low regulation, etc.) to thrive.
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
Even if there’s a war the tech companies will be crucial, if Trump wins I can’t see that harming US tech either. I know these shares have already risen a lot but I see them rising further for quite a while
Am i wrong?
Frequently.
Look where the FAANGS were last year. Then the year before that. They are up and down faster than a bookers drawers.
Buy a diversified portfolio and hold it for the long term. You are closer to retirement than you like to believe.
Or, better still, try to outwit the market and dispose of all your extra cash that way. Saves spending it.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
Guardian are confirming the 28 billion pledge is being ditched . Together with Reeves pathetic defence of not bringing back the bankers bonus cap it’s been a woeful day for Labour .
At the moment the biggest danger to a Labour GE win is Labour!
They’re dropping a hugely popular policy because they’re terrified of Tory attacks . Utterly pathetic.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
AMD. NVidia is making billions from AI processors and the only company with the technology to challenge them in the medium term is AMD. Plus, AMD's core business is CPUs and their main rival Intel is busy blowing its own feet off at regular intervals.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
We need a huge increase in housebuilding the last estimate I saw is that we are missing 5 million+ homes - but we can't hike the minimum wage because when I look at the forthcoming increase it's at the point where it's once again dragging the next tier of jobs into minimum wage territory.
And the problem with that is?
If a skilled job pays the same as a minimum wage job it undermines the incentive to invest in training yourself up so hinders productivity growth
...which means there's a shortage of those with the skills which means the rate has to go up.
... until industry can't afford it and they decide to do without the workers and associated output instead.
The private sector isn't a bottomless pit of other people's money, ready to be plundered for dubious social goals. It's a fragile ecosystem that needs a special set of conditions (low taxes, low regulation, etc.) to thrive.
It seems to manage quite ok in, say, Scandinavia.
Pay people more, remove the need for wage and housing support and then you really could cut taxes.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
Borrowing to invest is quite different from day to day spending . Starmer and Reeves seem to be the biggest danger to Labour winning the GE .
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
If Labour had opposed lockdown it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference; the Tories were in power and made the decisions.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
Once again Starmer is to blame for Government actions! Is there no limit to this Mephistopheles!
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Is Ed Miliband going to resign in protest
Nah. He's put in the hard yards and stuck it out through the long years of opposition, and may return to the Cabinet after a 14 year gap, no sense throwing that away now.
I do wonder how many of the current Cabinet, still young and with only a year or so of Cabinet under their belt, feeling aggrieved that they are approaching their prime just as they enter opposition, will stick it out for 5-10 years to try to get another go at a top job.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
If Labour had opposed lockdown it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference; the Tories were in power and made the decisions.
If Labour had opposed lockdown then the Tories may not have got away with it, especially with opposition on his backbenches.
Instead we had Starmer banging on about the Johnson variant and opposing lifting restrictions as risky with absolutely no regard for the effect it would leave on either the Treasury nor public services that need Treasury funding.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
Once again Starmer is to blame for Government actions! Is there no limit to this Mephistopheles!
They say people can be their own worst enemy, and PM Starmer will need to keep an eye out for himself given his ability to undermine the government of the day.
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Is Ed Miliband going to resign in protest
Nah. He's put in the hard yards and stuck it out through the long years of opposition, and may return to the Cabinet after a 14 year gap, no sense throwing that away now.
I do wonder how many of the current Cabinet, still young and with only a year or so of Cabinet under their belt, feeling aggrieved that they are approaching their prime just as they enter opposition, will stick it out for 5-10 years to try to get another go at a top job.
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
Even if there’s a war the tech companies will be crucial, if Trump wins I can’t see that harming US tech either. I know these shares have already risen a lot but I see them rising further for quite a while
Am i wrong?
Might be worth keeping an ear out for some not-quite-ready AI companies like Mistral, Rain & Perplexity - or even some of the moonshot fusion start-ups. Don't think you can invest in them yet unless you have a few million to spare in seed rounds though.
Google I'm really not sure about. Nvidia, Amazon, MS at least have concrete products. Feels like Google is eating itself from the inside - both technology-wise and corporate politics-wise.
I wouldn't be *too* negative on Google, they have - after all - got the world's number one TV station (for which they don't need to pay for content), the world's number one mobile phone operating system, the number one provider of email and calendar to businesses, the number one provider of cloud computing and there's a little search business in there too.
If I was going to be negative on one of them, I think it would probably be Microsoft, which is at the tail end of the whole "convert everyone to subscriptions" cycle. Because Microsoft has no presence in mobile, is losing share in regular compute, and more and more businesses are going down the Google Docs is good enough for me route.
Nvidia I love as a company, but it's already priced to quadruple in size. Which I'm sure it will do. But that's a lot of the future growth already in the share price.
There is a YouTube/podcast 'SVIC' by some ex-googlers that's worth a watch. Ex-VP of Engineering at google as I remember, They are.... 'unimpressed' by their time, and the current internals at the company,
Microsoft are dominating (to an extent I've been surprised the Biden admin hasn't gone for them) the "business messaging / office apps' world. "Teams" has decimated Slack.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
If Labour had opposed lockdown it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference; the Tories were in power and made the decisions.
That lockdown was supported broadly on a bipartisan basis for most of the time probably made it an easier pill for those on the fence to swallow and thus easier to get through, maybe. But it's a far cry from that unknowable hypothetical and pinning the blame on it to Labour.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
If only Labour had opposed lockdown, the Treasury wouldn't be so skint , nor would public services be so knackered, and sure some more people would have died of natural causes but they now wouldn't be on waiting lists or demanding a pension, dead people don't wait for anything or have any demands.
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
I like a lot of what you post Barty, but you do often fail to keep a sense of proportion about these things.
The Tories have been trashing education for nearly 14 years, they'd have managed to trash it perfectly well with or without lockdowns.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who is at her wits end: Her husband works full-time in a low-pay job, she has been does not work but looks after their four children, all under 10.
They privately rent a 3-bed house and have just been told by the letting agent that their rent is going up by 41% (!) in March. Reason? - BTL "owner's mortgage has gone up". There's nothing else locally they can move to for any less rent (there are hardly any 3-bed homes for rent locally). They are on the council housing register but would need to become actually homeless to stand any chance of getting anything, then it could be B&B for a long-stretch.
They receive UC support which was covering their rent but that's capped by the Local Housing Allowance at about 75% of their new rent. They were already struggling on the old rent and regularly borrowing from family mid-month, paying back when they got paid... and repeat. Rent, Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Food, Transport - this is where all their money goes.
What kind of messed-up country have we become where:
1) Taxpayers have to subsidise a traditional working family to live? 2) Those subsidies are set based on 'local rent levels' which are way below any actual comparable local rents?
We are seeing this every week now: working families, both tenants and mortgaged homeowners, who have hit the point where they just cannot make sums add up.
Anyone who thinks we're about to hit a feel-good period is a bit deluded imo.
We need a huge increase in housebuilding and a big hike in the minimum wage - why the f*ck are taxpayers subsidising low-pay employers and BTL landlords?
Ultimately, no social model will turn one low salary into a comfortable standard of living for six humans.
That's kinda what I was thinking. Basically is someone on minimum wage with a non working wife really expecting to have enough money for 4 kids? What they are unhappy about is that we are not subsidising them sufficiently to give them the standard of living they think they are entitled to. Well, actually, they aren't.
"the standard of living they think they are entitled to" = "housed, warm and fed", in this case.
Maybe you're right though. Why did they have four children, how selfish of them. And yet, don't we have a demographic crisis? Don't we need more children?
The couple I week or two ago, contemplating selling house and trying to rent because they can't afford the mortgage now - both working, both on minimum wage - they only had two children.
That's the problem with meritocracy. People deserve a decent life even if the system decides them to have little merit.
Define 'decent'.
How much should people be protected from their own decisions? If I go out and waste money; become penniless through drink, drugs or gambling, do I personally deserve the same lifestyle as someone who has been careful and made better decisions? Sure, the welfare system should ensure I can *live*, but the same lifestyle?
On the other hand, a friend of mine was the first in her family to go to uni, yet soon afterwards was struck down by a life-limiting illness. She made no decisions that contributed to her illness. Does she deserve the same lifestyle as someone who continuously makes bad decisions?
If you say 'yes' to both of these, then I reckon the general public would disagree.
And this opens a hornet's nest...
I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable.
When only one of them works? People's poor decisions should not be rewarded. I ensured I was earning more than 40k (in today's money) and had my own home before we had our first.
FFS just listen to yourself.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
So why did they have four kids? How many kids did they already have when they started having other people subsidize their lives?
Perhaps they had 4 kids before their circumstances changed. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
You can be pretty sure if that was the case, the journalist would have mentioned that in the sob story.
What journalist?
I mean... I written a couple of thread headers, does that qualify me?
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Labour (and for that matter the Tories too) know how skint the Treasury is and how run down public services are. Councils, Schools, Universities, NHS, Home Office, Criminal Justice system, Armed Forces, etc are all knackered.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
Labour need to make the case for public *investment*. Every reputable economist on earth knows that British lack of capital investment is a major impediment to growth.
This particular policy was popular with Labour voters. It’s not obvious - apart from cowardice - why Labour have junked it.
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
Why, oh why, do Labour do this? If they're going to drop it, do it quietly. Terrible message management.
Is Ed Miliband going to resign in protest
Nah. He's put in the hard yards and stuck it out through the long years of opposition, and may return to the Cabinet after a 14 year gap, no sense throwing that away now.
I do wonder how many of the current Cabinet, still young and with only a year or so of Cabinet under their belt, feeling aggrieved that they are approaching their prime just as they enter opposition, will stick it out for 5-10 years to try to get another go at a top job.
Not many, hopefully.
Sure, but people like Donelan or Badenoch or Coutinho are still relative newbies when it comes to Cabinet careers, especially Coutinho. They may not have exactly shined in that time, but it's at least conceivable they might do better under a different leader in a different situation. Others have had sufficient time that even if they stick around it's backbenches for them.
But I really doubt many will have the stamina, or the political skills to remain a potential Cabinet pick, unless they win in 5 years time.
My hard work out here in the east is making me money. I have sums to invest
But where? My sense is that the AI/tech boom has a long way to go yet, and that it’s hard to go wrong with the Magnificent Seven - Google, Amazon, Nvidia, MS, etc
Even if there’s a war the tech companies will be crucial, if Trump wins I can’t see that harming US tech either. I know these shares have already risen a lot but I see them rising further for quite a while
Am i wrong?
Might be worth keeping an ear out for some not-quite-ready AI companies like Mistral, Rain & Perplexity - or even some of the moonshot fusion start-ups. Don't think you can invest in them yet unless you have a few million to spare in seed rounds though.
Google I'm really not sure about. Nvidia, Amazon, MS at least have concrete products. Feels like Google is eating itself from the inside - both technology-wise and corporate politics-wise.
Google has DeepMind, which is no small thing
Tho its search engine model is menaced by GPTs
There will be a big market for search engines that give you accurate results, though.
That's Perplexity's market in fact.
Their issue is that they don't have Google's original USP. People say Google's USP back in the late 90s to early 2000s was their search engine's quality.
It wasn't.
It was the fact they were not attempting to be a portal. On dialups, their rivals (remember AskJeeves?) would take an age to load. Google had a simple page that loaded virtually instantly, and gave answers in a similar manner. It wasn't the quality of the answers; it was the speed.
If I was investing in a new mass web product, I would not be asking: "What is new?". Instead, I'd be asking; "what do people really want, but currently hate?"
That's what Google answered back in ~1998.
You possibly underestimate how bad the web is for a lot of people - especially those without a thorough ad-blocker. Perplexity (or someone like them - maybe even google if they weren't busy eating themselves) producing relevant information without 100 popovers, cookie warnings, auto-play video adverts, tracking, "subscribe to our newsletter" popovers etc. I've seen regular people just blown away by it.
Not sure if Perplexity will be 'the new google' - but something heading in that line is going to make a big dent in the older 'legacy' search engine market.
It feels a bit like google did back in those days. "Ask my question, get relevant information, bail".
That's fair enough, and I've never used Perplexity.
I don't use adblockers for ... reasons, but I know lots of people who do. Yet I don't find ads too intrusive. I don't get frequent popups or autoplay adverts. But that might just be the sites I use.
As for cookie warnings; they should just be once per site. The one on my own site reads: "This website uses cookies to help pay for this site via advertising. I do not take personal information from you, and I have no evil plans to take over the world, influence foreign elections or otherwise do evil. That's too much like hard work."
As I understand it (not my world) - the act of declining cookies means the website can't store the fact that you have declined cookies. Yay poorly drafted legislation by ill-informed legislators.
And there has been a recent change which is why - I think - we're all being subjected to a fresh batch of 'Accept? Go on. Go on. Go on..." popovers.
Comments
Can't send a sex criminal back to his own country because he might be at risk.
Presume their focus groups are picking up major worries with swing voters about this £28b number but personally I am starting to wonder what's the point of changing the government if they both agree on every bloody thing.
Home Office defines the law, and oversees mainstream policing.
You can have that one for free Yvette, if you’re reading.
https://espc.com/property-for-sale/edinburgh-south/marchmont
I’m very welcoming to those who are law abiding and that’s my attitude to immigration . As long as people are good citizens then I’m very pro immigration . If not they can bugger off .
for us in Britain, the 'ideal' is a detached house with sizable garden and garage, not a small flat in Nelson Mandela House. And how do you change that ideal, given the history?
Former Afghan special forces who served alongside the British but were denied relocation to the UK will have their cases re-examined, the government says.
Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said ineligible applications with credible claims of links to Afghan specialist units would be reassessed.
The so-called "Triples" were elite units set up, funded and run by the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68152923
The concept of 'elite' units in the Afghan army seems to be an oxymoron.
Perhaps before any asylum is granted we could be told what proportion of these 'elite' units:
1) Actually did any fighting
2) Were killed in action
3) Defected to the Taliban
4) Deserted
What we don't have is enough land with planning consent. Hence why land with planning consent can suddenly be worth thousands times much than land without it.
Abolish that anomaly, ensure land is worth the same either way, and the price of housing would fall accordingly.
Insulation etc is not that big of a cost compared to that, its miniscule.
And yes, for an example of a country that liberated planning and saw build-quality improve while housing is affordable look for example at Tokyo (where the population has risen despite Japan's demographics).
https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60
Tech valuations are pretty bubbly at the moment.
Btw if you have Disney+, Shop for Killers is pretty entertaining.
I know you don’t mind a bit of gore, and it’s more intelligent than the usual fare.
(Korean, though.)
Nobody is in control of the Home Office.
Not per year: in total.
With interest rates having increased a lot of people are going to go over that limit and have adjustments to their tax code.
14 years they have had of shouting that immigration is a disaster and we will keep to around 10Ks a year.
Year in and year out.
Either this kind of migration isn't a disaster or it is and they have utterly failed.
Either way the Tories have completed failed.
Next time I see the woman I'll suggest she gets her husband to earn £40k+. I doubt they had considered that idea.
(Btw In this instance the woman is not currently able to work; she had been medically assessed as such by the DWP and is receiving treatment.)
Will Starmer keep with it? Or will he return to the policies behind the years of failure?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/01/labour-to-ditch-annual-green-investment-pledge-party-sources-say
…from £28bn to £10bn.
I think this is wrong economically as well as from a climate change perspective.
Well targeted* investment would very likely see a positive return.
(*OK, that’s seriously begging the question.)
Yeah, that's affordable. 🤦♂️
*) where do people *want* to live. Most need to be near potential places of work. They want a choice, and that means we cannot live in Scourie, however much I'd like to. And that leads to:
*) Infrastructure. It's not just about houses and gardens; it's about roads. And shops. And car parking. And rail (yes, I said it...). And water. And sewage. And power. And schools. And all those 'little' things you forget about.
Your dream is rather Communist: have people live where they are told to live, in the places they are told to live, in the houses they are told to live...
Which probably wasn’t all that wrong.
That people can do whatever they want with their own land, except for areas deemed not suitable for construction (as opposed to only allowing construction when and where it is permitted).
I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it.
The attitude that "everything that is not forbidden, is permitted" rather than the current law that "everything that is not permitted, is forbidden".
You said; "I would suggest that a rented 3 bedroom property between 6 is not unreasonable. "
I responded that means kids would have to share, which for some reason is seen as a bad thing?
If I was going to be negative on one of them, I think it would probably be Microsoft, which is at the tail end of the whole "convert everyone to subscriptions" cycle. Because Microsoft has no presence in mobile, is losing share in regular compute, and more and more businesses are going down the Google Docs is good enough for me route.
Nvidia I love as a company, but it's already priced to quadruple in size. Which I'm sure it will do. But that's a lot of the future growth already in the share price.
Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
If you ask, "which one would you vote for, Trump, Biden, Kennedy, or Stein", then Biden drops about ten points, thanks to Kennedy and Stein.
Which is why RFK's campaign is being bankrolled by some prominent MAGAites.
John McTernan
@johnmcternan
·
1h
There are days when you have to wonder, what is the point.
Labour to ditch £28bn annual green investment pledge, party sources say
“The change, after a spate of recent government attacks”
No 10 must love that at least someone takes them seriously
====
If even uber-election pragmatist McTernan is questioning your tactics then you have to wonder...
Today the number one bill in families budgets is housing, dwarfing all other costs, and much of that is the artificially inflated value of land caused exclusively by the planning system.
"I dream that people don't need to ask permission, they want to do something, they just do it."
Regardless of the impact it has on other people?
If they wanted to reduce immigration, as well as give an incentive to improve productivity, then migrant workers should have come with a requirement to be paid 20% more than the going rate rather than allowed to come and be paid 20% less than the going rate.
As for whether people should be able to do what they want regardless of the impact it has on other people, yes, within the law. Because if you're within the law, its not really impacting other people.
I do have one doubt - there is a snowball effect of economic growth and housing costs in our cities which is stimulated by population growth. We are always going to have this problem as cities become relatively more attractive. This is more obvious in Scotland, where our population has flatlined yet prices in Lothian have rocketed.
Another way to reduce housing pressure would be to encourage growth in provincial towns and rural areas, spreading demand around more evenly. Then you might have more chance of "the ideal", particularly with lots of industrial waste ground in places like Greenock/Middlesbrough etc
A detached house with a two-car garage /s
Have people able to raze their own land in cities and rebuild it as flats if they want.
Have people able to raze whatever they want in Middlesbrough and build a decent home if they want.
Or any combination inbetween.
The key is to get the "everything we haven't permitted is forbidden" attitude flipped on its head and then let people decide.
Liberate the system and let people decide. Inner city flat, or suburban home, or whatever they want - all affordable so they're choosing based on preference rather than compulsion.
Neither you nor I should be making anyone else's choice for them. Set it free, and let everyone decide for themselves.
Copy and paste the street plans of desirable old suburbs. The places that price signals show that people want to live in.
Make the exteriors appealing (which probably means Georgian Pastiche), give the innards modern standards of insulation and utilities. Then denser living is popular and it's easy for private enterprise to provide all the other stuff that makes life pleasant.
Nationwide the price signals that people prefer detached homes, then semi-detached homes, with terraces being the least preferable houses of all. And flats even less popular than terraces.
The idea that denser living is popular is not remotely based on any facts or evidence. Inner-city living may be popular for some, but in like-for-like areas people will prefer more space for themselves without others.
Extraordinary testimony from police that they were ordered to lie, and it bears out what those QC's who've been saying there should have been public enquiry on this for years , have pointed to. There's still time for a proper enquiry.
steve richards
@steverichards14
Even in a deep crisis- with voters turning away from them- it’s the Conservative party and the media that remain mighty while a Labour leadership- miles ahead in polls- ‘caves in’ again:
I don’t condone what the police did. However the miners were trying to rule the country and bring down elected governments. It was, pretty much, a civil war.
That doesn't have to be Camden, but I think the evidence that a typical modern development goes too far the other way is pretty convincing. People are on average willing to pay more to live in a smaller house Somewhere a bigger house Nowhere. And recent development patterns have tended to create too many Nowheres.
Look where the FAANGS were last year. Then the year before that. They are up and down faster than a bookers drawers.
Buy a diversified portfolio and hold it for the long term. You are closer to retirement than you like to believe.
Quite the opposite, the evidence is that all developments are snapped up due to a chronic shortage of housing.
Homes getting developed then left idle as nobody wants them is not happening.
The film really illustrates once again what a dreadfully and unnecessarily polarising figure Thatcher was, whatever else she managed to achieve. The postindustral transition could have been managed in a much more humane way, as the SDP/Liberal Alliance would have done.
This is his most egregious climb-down to date, and it comes because he simply doesn’t have the political cojones to defend public investment.
The private sector isn't a bottomless pit of other people's money, ready to be plundered for dubious social goals. It's a fragile ecosystem that needs a special set of conditions (low taxes, low regulation, etc.) to thrive.
Seriously, Stillwaters is right.
Whoever wins the election knows that they will have to sort it out. The Tories talk about tax cuts because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences. Starmer and Reeves don't want to promise spending that they cannot deliver.
Its a lot easier, quicker and more popular to use the money for pay and benefit increases.
The policy was very popular with Labour voters . They seem to be chasing votes of people who would never vote for them.
As for Reeves she seems to have forgotten which party she’s in !
Our civil liberties would have prevailed and education wouldn't have been trashed on the altar of halting a natural disease.
Pay people more, remove the need for wage and housing support and then you really could cut taxes.
I do wonder how many of the current Cabinet, still young and with only a year or so of Cabinet under their belt, feeling aggrieved that they are approaching their prime just as they enter opposition, will stick it out for 5-10 years to try to get another go at a top job.
Instead we had Starmer banging on about the Johnson variant and opposing lifting restrictions as risky with absolutely no regard for the effect it would leave on either the Treasury nor public services that need Treasury funding.
Microsoft are dominating (to an extent I've been surprised the Biden admin hasn't gone for them) the "business messaging / office apps' world. "Teams" has decimated Slack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn4nY5MiTCs
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/01/ex-mp-simon-danczuk-suspended-for-sexting-to-fight-byelection-for-reform
The Tories have been trashing education for nearly 14 years, they'd have managed to trash it perfectly well with or without lockdowns.
Every reputable economist on earth knows that British lack of capital investment is a major impediment to growth.
This particular policy was popular with Labour voters.
It’s not obvious - apart from cowardice - why Labour have junked it.
But I really doubt many will have the stamina, or the political skills to remain a potential Cabinet pick, unless they win in 5 years time.
And there has been a recent change which is why - I think - we're all being subjected to a fresh batch of 'Accept? Go on. Go on. Go on..." popovers.