More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
The only interesting thing from the Labour gains in these by elections is to set them against their by election gains just before the last time they took over from the Tories
Blair’s party were adding 5000 votes to 92 results in their wins whilst yesterday they added 100 in one and lost 5000 in the other.
Turnouts were 37% compared to 62% in SE Staffs 1996 then 71% in Wirral South 1997
I think that means a likely low turnout in the next GE and room for a surprise 3rd party surge in votes if not seats
There's a slightly different context according to a former Tory strategist I spoke to today.
Towards the end those by-elections literally could have led to the government falling given John Major's non-existent majority, they actually meant something, particularly with the UUP annoyed at the government.
This parliament's by-elections aren't going to trigger a change of government or herald an early election, that's why the swing is important, so last night is comparable to Dudley West.
Six out of the twelve largest Con to Lab by-election swings since 1945 have come in this parliament.
And here's another comparison, when the fate of the government wasn't at stake;
There were only one Con vs Lab contest this close to the 1992 election (in Langbaurgh). The swing to Labour was 3.5% vs 22.5% as the average of the two yesterday.
In the 1992 general election the swing to Labour was 3.5%.
"I’m a parent to two — aged six and three. They are already aware of single-use plastics. Data shows that households with 5 to 11-year-olds have more eco-friendly habits. And when my husband’s burgundy passport expired this year, my daughter’s bafflement as we explained the new Brexit blue one suggests the kids might yet take back control."
I'm a parent to two Gen Alphas as well, aged five and eighteen months. Not once have either ever mentioned single use plastics to me - they have occasionally on litter - and nor have they ever commented on the colour of their passport nor do they even know what Brexit is.
They are interested, particularly the older one, in playing doctors, Elsa, dolls houses, soft play, watching kids shows on Cbeebies, and Milkshake, and being read a bedtime story. It's a struggle to get them to eat anything at all, although they drink milk like camels and love cheese. And what they mainly want is spending more time playing with mummy and daddy. Just like all kids throughout the ages.
Why do journalists write this clickbait tripe and who do they expect to belief it?
They write it because they want their friends and associates to think that the journalist has exceptionally clever and wise children, and guess what, the children are clever and wise because the parents are. That’s the message they are trying to get across.
There are whole lists on Facebook of twatty parents posting stories about how their four year old quoted something by Buddha as they passed a homeless man and how the young see the truth etc etc bollocks bollocks. There is a pisstake response even now which is “and everyone clapped”.
It’s a symptom of “main character syndrome” where so many people, thanks to social media, think they are the main character in a book or film and so think everyone wants to know what’s going on in their life and have to burnish it because in reality they are pretty normal and boring.
I recommend "Crap on Linkedin" and "The State of Linkedin" on Twitter for exposing that type of shite on Linkedin. A few years ago I posted on LinkedIn -
'Yesterday my four year old told me “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”. I was surprised and delighted by such wisdom.
Especially as she's a dog.'
Now, contrary to the the claims of some on here, I do not I consider myself sort of hero of comedy. I know I'm not. Nevertheless it emerges that LinkedIn is not the place for that sort of light-hearted throwaway piss-take, as the response from other posters and my digital marketing team proved.
A lot of female friends have left LinkedIn because it’s become a bit of a stalky attempted pick up site where they keep getting random messages from people asking them if they are single, asking them on dates or making advances.
Wait.
If you want to pick up women, why not use something that is more... appropriate... for that like Tinder or Plenty of Fish or whatever?
I believe it’s a favourite for chaps who are in relationships/married as their other half doesn’t see the dating apps and no history on dating sites.
Just do what I do and wear a Zorro mask on Tinder.
Works every time.
Candidly, the main problem with Tinder is that whenever you go out on a date, you're faced with a dilemma:
Which is more important to you: mocking astrology or getting laid?
In a situation where you have signed up to Tinder, the answer to that question ought to be pretty obvious.
On Topic, Rishi's problem is that he is having to do early term unpopular stuff (cut spending, raise taxes) as the countdown clock ticks towards the next election. Even if he were a political genius, that wouldn't be easy.
And, bless him, he isn't.
In short - Rishi has been dealt a shit hand. And is shit at playing it.
The thing is that all he had to do was play it safe. After Boris & Truss, that would have been enough of a change.
Dull but competent. Steal Starmer's "Mr Steady" costume, but throw in a small tax cut of some sort as a marker for a brighter post-election future.
It might have been enough. It would at least have limited the size of the coming defeat.
Fate was cruel to him. All he had to do was be competent. Yet competence was the once thing he lacked.
Well, competence and common sense.
Come to think of it, competence, common sense and humility.
Among the things he lacks are such diverse elements as competence, common sense, humility and the ability to use a contactless card ...
It may be as simple as he lacks friends. I can't think of a single solid Sunak ally. That'd explain more fully Cameron's return as he's quite good at that.
Thanks.
Among the things he lacks are such diverse elements as competence, common sense, humility, the ability to use a contactless card, and friends.
Also, a sense of the absurd, any clue about how most people live their lives, any inkling that he has any inadequacies ...
Blimey, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
Should we club together and buy him a comfy chair?
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
Building where the NIMBYs live will just exacerbate our unbalanced economy. London and the South East is overheated while much of the rest of the country is in decline. We need new towns, or refurbished old ones. As an aside, we also need more builders.
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
The only question is how big the Labour majority will be. 98% certain on this.
If Rishi and and Conservative Party suddenly discovered Mad Skillz *and* Starmer stands in every turd he can find, *and* the SNP suddenly zooms back in the polls, a small Labour Majority is possible.
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
What an excellent plan. Well done you. What are you packing.
I've been thinking about this today..
A pair of shorts, four t-shirts, sets of underwear and pairs of socks, a pack of hikers' wool (never used it before, but apparently great for blister prevention), my umbrella, Minirig speaker, continental adaptor plug with USB ports, a few leads, two USB battery packs, toiletries and one of those Apple luggage trackers so my Mum will know where I am
It needs to fit under the seat in front
nice
If you're worried about blisters, those blister plasters are very effective. Saved me from abandoning a long hike. And take up no space on your bag.
Compeed plasters?
They're ace. I rarely got blisters when hiking (and never when running), but on the rare occasion I did, Compeeds made the difference between being able to walk comfortably the next day, and agony.
One hint though: don't use them with expensive socks as inners. After a while, the edges of the Compeed can turn up and stick to the sock; this leaves the glue on the sock that I can never get it out again. Easily cured by using a thin pair of socks (or specialist liner socks).
They do rather rely on you recognising the warning signs and using them before the blister properly develops, though.
Otherwise, it's merely the difference between being able to limp ouchily, and agony.
(I realise that both you and Blanche cover serious distances, so I'm probably outing myself as a complete wuss here. But that's okay, considering that I actually am a complete wuss...)
Hiker's wool is good, too - similar to a compeed, use it at the first sign of any rubbing. Stick a thin layer under the affected area, and it'll turn into a felt-like mat that sticks to your sock as you walk. It's pretty effective, but you have to pick it out of the sock by hand before washing them, otherwise you get bits of fluff over everything else in that wash.
Everyone's different, but I find that if I apply them in the middle of a day's walk, they don't attach well, perhaps due to sweat and heat. I tend to continue to the end of the day, then puncture the blister (*), let air get to it overnight, and then apply the Compeed the next morning, before the next day's walk.
I often get tiny blisters on my toes, which don't bother me. It's blisters elsewhere on my feet that get me. On my coastal walk (6,200 miles), I got six of those blisters. Two on the same day, walking around Orme's Head. I'd walked along the beach in trainers, and sand got into them. I then followed the road around the headland, and the sand moved under the arch of my foot and happily created two massive blisters, from one side of my foot to the other. Live and learn...
(*) Experts say never do this, but I've never had any problems.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The issue is not that hard. You can easily imagine a civilisation in permanent decline - people getting older and living longer, opposing growth and change, and outnumbering young people - who in turn can't change anything politically. It could go like this for 20, 30 more years. It relies on some kind of realisation amongst older people that the situation needs to change, which many do, but not enough and they don't act on it.
The one comment I would make, by way of counterpoint though, is that house prices are more affordable now than for many, many years when factored against wage increases, particularly the increase in the minimum wage.
Is Engoron actually going to issue a sentence, or is he just going to keep us all on tenterhooks with the aim of further increasing the interest payable?
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
Speaking for myself, I'm glad Labour won yesterday. I hope 'their' candidate in Rochdale doesn't win, but that's for the obvious non-party political reason.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
Apathy is the final card the Torys, or their friends in the media can play, a pox on all your houses, they are all the same, expect that line, hoping Labour don't get enough of their vote out, there are signs of it already gaining traction
Hope for his family's sake it's not as serious as it sounds, but for somebody as committed as Ashwin to pull out of a Test I doubt if it's an ingrowing toenail.
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
Wellingborough ought to have been a far worse seat for the Conservatives; predecessor leaving in scandalous circumstances, successor candidate basically a raised middle finger at the electorate (at least, I hope that's a finger), apparently no campaign worthy of the name. In that context, whilst third place and 13% isn't shabby for Reform, it's also not an indication of a party heading for any MPs this time next year. If not Wellingborough, then where?
As for tax cuts, there hasn't really been space for them anyway, there certainly isn't now.
(Question for those who know... I think the fuel duty freeze is technically only for a year at a time, so each extension costs in the OBR calculations when it's announced.
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
Depending on the terrain and pack, either easy or hell. If it's flattish on good surfaces, not too hard. If it's bad surfaces, or hilly, really, really hard.
On my coastal walk, the 'hardest' day I had was from the old church at Tarbert (to the east of Mallaig) to Sourlies along the southern shore of Loch Nevis; from memory, seven miles that took me seven hours. Followed the same day by climbing the beallach into Gleann Meadail (sea level, to 1800 foot) then back to sea level at Inverie. Which was much more climbing, but as there was a path, done in a fraction of the time.
It was nice to end the walk at a pub, though,
Edit: I tend to average about 20 miles a day; I can do a lot more, but I tend to enjoy the apres-walk...
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
He'd vote for Labour if it was led by a 'Blue Labour' figure. So, maybe, just maybe, he'd vote for a Lisa Nandy or Angela Rayner led party. Can't see him being on keen a Streeting or Reeves led one though.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Hope for his family's sake it's not as serious as it sounds, but for somebody as committed as Ashwin to pull out of a Test I doubt if it's an ingrowing toenail.
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
Depending on the terrain and pack, either easy or hell. If it's flattish on good surfaces, not too hard. If it's bad surfaces, or hilly, really, really hard.
On my coastal walk, the 'hardest' day I had was from the old church at Tarbert (to the east of Mallaig) to Sourlies along the southern shore of Loch Nevis; from memory, seven miles that took me seven hours. Followed the same day by climbing the beallach into Gleann Meadail (sea level, to 1800 foot) then back to sea level at Inverie. Which was much more climbing, but as there was a path, done in a fraction of the time.
It was nice to end the walk at a pub, though,
Edit: I tend to average about 20 miles a day; I can do a lot more, but I tend to enjoy the apres-walk...
Walking the South Downs way 20 years ago we did 15 miles a day for the first three days, then two days at 22 and 24 miles, before a shorter last day. I’d say the shorter days can be a bit too short (you either arrive at your destination early or find something to do en route) and the longer days are tough for the last few miles. But definitely do able.
Quite impressive from the GOP Speaker who is resolutely blocking aid to Ukraine.
Speaker Johnson statement on Navalny:
“The United States, and our partners, must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.” https://twitter.com/maxpcohen/status/1758522975689519165
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My parents have disinherited me and my sister, passing the estate down to the three grandsons. The argument is that I don’t need it (fair) and it will be a boost for the boys at a good ish time (assuming they don’t end up spending it all on care costs or rugby). I think the boomer inheritances will generally be spread around.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The issue is not that hard. You can easily imagine a civilisation in permanent decline - people getting older and living longer, opposing growth and change, and outnumbering young people - who in turn can't change anything politically. It could go like this for 20, 30 more years. It relies on some kind of realisation amongst older people that the situation needs to change, which many do, but not enough and they don't act on it.
The one comment I would make, by way of counterpoint though, is that house prices are more affordable now than for many, many years when factored against wage increases, particularly the increase in the minimum wage.
A decades-long contraction of our economy is always a possibility - there's no law that says that we must keep on growing. But deliberately following that path would be fraught with danger, though, especially if explicit consent had not been given by the population.
That sort of contraction would likely be extremely lumpy in its effects, and you'd end up with mass emigration being at the very top end of what you could hope for, with riots and lynch mobs being rather more likely.
There's a reason why even the Green Party is dominated by 'green growth' and 'bright green' types rather than 'dark green' / degrowth stands of thought!
As for your counterpoint - there can't be many, unfortunately, who can hope to own a home on minimum wage these days. In more than half the country, people on the median salary would struggle to do so. And in the South-East of England, people on twice the median have all but given up hope.
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
Apathy is the final card the Torys, or their friends in the media can play, a pox on all your houses, they are all the same, expect that line, hoping Labour don't get enough of their vote out, there are signs of it already gaining traction
Are you sure it's not the final straw to be clutched at?
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
I did 458 miles in 19 days last year around Brittany, and I've had another year training as a postie since (about 11 - 14 miles a day)
I've got a few days' cushion if I can't keep up the pace; I'd rather finish the walk than gorge in San Sebastian, but I'm pretty confident that I can do it as planned
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
Depending on the terrain and pack, either easy or hell. If it's flattish on good surfaces, not too hard. If it's bad surfaces, or hilly, really, really hard.
On my coastal walk, the 'hardest' day I had was from the old church at Tarbert (to the east of Mallaig) to Sourlies along the southern shore of Loch Nevis; from memory, seven miles that took me seven hours. Followed the same day by climbing the beallach into Gleann Meadail (sea level, to 1800 foot) then back to sea level at Inverie. Which was much more climbing, but as there was a path, done in a fraction of the time.
It was nice to end the walk at a pub, though,
Edit: I tend to average about 20 miles a day; I can do a lot more, but I tend to enjoy the apres-walk...
Knoydart is incredibly rough. Otherwise, 30-40km is fine. Most I've ever done is 70km with a 18kg pack...
In hot countries I do max 25km and lounge around all afternoon.
The only interesting thing from the Labour gains in these by elections is to set them against their by election gains just before the last time they took over from the Tories
Blair’s party were adding 5000 votes to 92 results in their wins whilst yesterday they added 100 in one and lost 5000 in the other.
Turnouts were 37% compared to 62% in SE Staffs 1996 then 71% in Wirral South 1997
I think that means a likely low turnout in the next GE and room for a surprise 3rd party surge in votes if not seats
You can derive whatever comfort you like from the assertion the sheer number of Labour votes cast doesn't mean they won convincingly or the assertion all the voters who stayed at home were basically Conservatiuves making a protest or the idea evety Reform voter is basically a Conservative who will come back to the blue camp at the General Election.
That's basically all who are opposed to a Labour win at the next election have got.
Perhaps we should also ask why 25,000 who voted Conservative in Wellingborough in December 2019 didn't do so yesterday or the 19,000 who voted Conservative in Kingswood in December 2019 and didn't do so yesterday?
It can't just be about the Labour vote.
I don’t need comforting, I didn’t even remember there were by elections last night until I saw the news this morning. It’s hardly as though I was sweating on the results. I wouldn’t vote conservative in a by election in my own constituency so I know pretty well how 2019 Tory voters felt
But it is true that in comparable by elections in the 92-97 parliament, the Tories were losing votes whilst Labour were adding them; the Tories are losing them now, but Labour aren’t adding them, so I stand by what I said, turnout could be low, and there’s room for a third party to snap up disaffected voters. I don’t see how that is shilling for the Tories., I told you the other day I was unlikely to vote for them, I only ever have once, and that was because I backed Leave & every other party was trying to ignore our win
I'm on a train. A group of about three large families got on, with multiple kids. Was prepared for chaos and shouting and dread. Then they talked and chatted in the way of families, and one of the kids got tickled by their mum, with high-pitched giggles. Theres a shit-ton of people in the world tonight who are looking at the mangled wrecks of their homes and families, who would give their left arms to be where I'm sat. Maybe things aren't too bad after all. 😔
The only interesting thing from the Labour gains in these by elections is to set them against their by election gains just before the last time they took over from the Tories
Blair’s party were adding 5000 votes to 92 results in their wins whilst yesterday they added 100 in one and lost 5000 in the other.
Turnouts were 37% compared to 62% in SE Staffs 1996 then 71% in Wirral South 1997
I think that means a likely low turnout in the next GE and room for a surprise 3rd party surge in votes if not seats
You can derive whatever comfort you like from the assertion the sheer number of Labour votes cast doesn't mean they won convincingly or the assertion all the voters who stayed at home were basically Conservatiuves making a protest or the idea evety Reform voter is basically a Conservative who will come back to the blue camp at the General Election.
That's basically all who are opposed to a Labour win at the next election have got.
Perhaps we should also ask why 25,000 who voted Conservative in Wellingborough in December 2019 didn't do so yesterday or the 19,000 who voted Conservative in Kingswood in December 2019 and didn't do so yesterday?
It can't just be about the Labour vote.
I don’t need comforting, I didn’t even remember there were by elections last night until I saw the news this morning. It’s hardly as though I was sweating on the results. I wouldn’t vote conservative in a by election in my own constituency so I know pretty well how 2019 Tory voters felt
But it is true that in comparable by elections in the 92-97 parliament, the Tories were losing votes whilst Labour were adding them; the Tories are losing them now, but Labour aren’t adding them, so I stand by what I said, turnout could be low, and there’s room for a third party to snap up disaffected voters. I don’t see how that is shilling for the Tories., I told you the other day I was unlikely to vote for them, I only ever have once, and that was because I backed Leave & every other party was trying to ignore our win
I think that's right; the Conservatives will lose votes because:
* They've alienated the Reform/UKIP wing, by failing to handle legal migration well. (And which they've combined by appearing to have failed with small boats, even as they've done a pretty good job.)
* They've alienated a lot of the Cameroon wing by their appointments, and by looking generally incompetent.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My point is simply that the number of empty bedrooms in the UK has continued to rise, even as we've suffered from a housing shortage.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My parents have disinherited me and my sister, passing the estate down to the three grandsons. The argument is that I don’t need it (fair) and it will be a boost for the boys at a good ish time (assuming they don’t end up spending it all on care costs or rugby). I think the boomer inheritances will generally be spread around.
I have a somewhat jaundiced view of this. I voluntarily disinherited myself (I have ill/disabled siblings), then later found out that my remaining parent ignored it and kept me in the will, then later later found out that due to unspecification the house won't be sold on death but will be occupied by whichever sibling will grab it, hence involuntarily disinheriting me. It's going to be one of those family scraps where everybody argues and lawyers pounce. Parents, be specific in your will as to how property is disposed of. It just causes grief if you don't.
I'm on a train. A group of about three large families got on, with multiple kids. Was prepared for chaos and shouting and dread. Then they talked and chatted in the way of families, and one of the kids got tickled by their mum, with high-pitched giggles. Theres a shit-ton of people in the world tonight who are looking at the mangled wrecks of their homes and families, who would give their left arms to be where I'm sat. Maybe things aren't too bad after all. 😔
Yesterday I visited a NT garden. 4 very young children (who I had just seen get gently told off by their mother/mother's friend) approached me and asked if they could stroke my dog. I said yes, saying he was very friendly, but also very boisterous, but he won't harm you. They were very kind and all thanked me when I left and said goodbye to my dog remembering his name. I felt motivated to change direction and tell their mother how impressed I was with their manners. Made my day.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
If it helps, the average is probably closer to leaving it to their two children, two partners and three grandchildren.
I mean really we need to abolish stamp duty and encourage downsizing before both parents pass away. It's certainly been a factor that has put off my parents (nearly 70) from downsizing from the family home.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
If it helps, the average is probably closer to leaving it to their two children, two partners and three grandchildren.
I mean really we need to abolish stamp duty and encourage downsizing before both parents pass away. It's certainly been a factor that has put off my parents (nearly 70) from downsizing from the family home.
That is exactly why the the number of empty bedrooms has risen alongside house prices.
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
Apathy is the final card the Torys, or their friends in the media can play, a pox on all your houses, they are all the same, expect that line, hoping Labour don't get enough of their vote out, there are signs of it already gaining traction
If apathy is gaining traction, surely the end of times approacheth….
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My point is simply that the number of empty bedrooms in the UK has continued to rise, even as we've suffered from a housing shortage.
In that case I suggest the appropriate solution is to set liability for IHT on the recipient, which will incentivise liquidation of the property.
>Ratters If it helps, the average is probably closer to leaving it to their two children, two partners and three grandchildren.
I mean really we need to abolish stamp duty and encourage downsizing before both parents pass away. It's certainly been a factor that has put off my parents (nearly 70) from downsizing from the family home.
The proposals I keep arguing for - the Proportional Property Tax ie Council Tax = ~0.5% of house value - have abolition of Stamp Duty as part of the proposal.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My parents have disinherited me and my sister, passing the estate down to the three grandsons. The argument is that I don’t need it (fair) and it will be a boost for the boys at a good ish time (assuming they don’t end up spending it all on care costs or rugby). I think the boomer inheritances will generally be spread around.
Nevertheless that’s a 19th century society, where your place in it depends heavily upon inheritance. With all the late 20th century progress toward meritocracy undone.
I'm on a train. A group of about three large families got on, with multiple kids. Was prepared for chaos and shouting and dread. Then they talked and chatted in the way of families, and one of the kids got tickled by their mum, with high-pitched giggles. Theres a shit-ton of people in the world tonight who are looking at the mangled wrecks of their homes and families, who would give their left arms to be where I'm sat. Maybe things aren't too bad after all. 😔
Yesterday I visited a NT garden. 4 very young children (who I had just seen get gently told off by their mother/mother's friend) approached me and asked if they could stroke my dog. I said yes, saying he was very friendly, but also very boisterous, but he won't harm you. They were very kind and all thanked me when I left and said goodbye to my dog remembering his name. I felt motivated to change direction and tell their mother how impressed I was with their manners. Made my day.
We find most children ask before they greet our dog, and that’s brilliant. Helps avoid bad situations. Our dog is as soft as anything, but a fairly hefty 40 kg. Quite scary for the younger ones.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
I agree, with the exception that I see two cases not one.
There are two serious cases against Trump:
(1) The fake electors plan, which is an attack on democracy.
(2) The New York case regarding property valuations: people go to jail for falsifying property valuations to the IRS. I posted a link a month or so ago about a property developer who systematically understated the value of his apartment complexes, saving himself about $3m, and who went to prison for 15 months. (And Trump's case is perhaps 50x more serious.) Similarly, there have been plenty of (poor) people who've gone to jail for fraud for deliberately overstating valuations to get loans.
The documents case and the business records case are junk, and should never have been brought.
The only interesting thing from the Labour gains in these by elections is to set them against their by election gains just before the last time they took over from the Tories
Blair’s party were adding 5000 votes to 92 results in their wins whilst yesterday they added 100 in one and lost 5000 in the other.
Turnouts were 37% compared to 62% in SE Staffs 1996 then 71% in Wirral South 1997
I think that means a likely low turnout in the next GE and room for a surprise 3rd party surge in votes if not seats
You can derive whatever comfort you like from the assertion the sheer number of Labour votes cast doesn't mean they won convincingly or the assertion all the voters who stayed at home were basically Conservatiuves making a protest or the idea evety Reform voter is basically a Conservative who will come back to the blue camp at the General Election.
That's basically all who are opposed to a Labour win at the next election have got.
Perhaps we should also ask why 25,000 who voted Conservative in Wellingborough in December 2019 didn't do so yesterday or the 19,000 who voted Conservative in Kingswood in December 2019 and didn't do so yesterday?
It can't just be about the Labour vote.
I don’t need comforting, I didn’t even remember there were by elections last night until I saw the news this morning. It’s hardly as though I was sweating on the results. I wouldn’t vote conservative in a by election in my own constituency so I know pretty well how 2019 Tory voters felt
But it is true that in comparable by elections in the 92-97 parliament, the Tories were losing votes whilst Labour were adding them; the Tories are losing them now, but Labour aren’t adding them, so I stand by what I said, turnout could be low, and there’s room for a third party to snap up disaffected voters. I don’t see how that is shilling for the Tories., I told you the other day I was unlikely to vote for them, I only ever have once, and that was because I backed Leave & every other party was trying to ignore our win
To be fair, this is a website where we occasionally talk politics (not as much as we used to) so there's been plenty of talk about the by-elections on here (we've not even mentioned the Lib Dem gain from Labour in Hull yesterday).
There's no evidence from yesterday a low turnout election will hurt Labour - as for the "third party", no, what we'll see I suspect is a lot of different second parties going after the incumbent Conservative vote. It'll mostly be Labour, some LDs, the odd Green and Reform if very well organised but the voting pattern of 45-25-11-11 is pretty well set and unless something dramatic happens that's where we are.
I'd put it to you for many the desire to see the Conservatives ejected from office is greater than whatever reservations they may have about Starmer. As to how Starmer will be once in office, that remains to be seen. However, that doesn't invalidate the opportunity he has been given to become Prime Minister nor does it invalidate those who wish to point out any deficiencies they feel he might have.
I'm on a train. A group of about three large families got on, with multiple kids. Was prepared for chaos and shouting and dread. Then they talked and chatted in the way of families, and one of the kids got tickled by their mum, with high-pitched giggles. Theres a shit-ton of people in the world tonight who are looking at the mangled wrecks of their homes and families, who would give their left arms to be where I'm sat. Maybe things aren't too bad after all. 😔
Yesterday I visited a NT garden. 4 very young children (who I had just seen get gently told off by their mother/mother's friend) approached me and asked if they could stroke my dog. I said yes, saying he was very friendly, but also very boisterous, but he won't harm you. They were very kind and all thanked me when I left and said goodbye to my dog remembering his name. I felt motivated to change direction and tell their mother how impressed I was with their manners. Made my day.
We find most children ask before they greet our dog, and that’s brilliant. Helps avoid bad situations. Our dog is as soft as anything, but a fairly hefty 40 kg. Quite scary for the younger ones.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My parents have disinherited me and my sister, passing the estate down to the three grandsons. The argument is that I don’t need it (fair) and it will be a boost for the boys at a good ish time (assuming they don’t end up spending it all on care costs or rugby). I think the boomer inheritances will generally be spread around.
Nevertheless that’s a 19th century society, where your place in it depends heavily upon inheritance. With all the late 20th century progress toward meritocracy undone.
I don’t really get what you are saying - how does my place in society depend on an inheritance I’m not getting?
The only interesting thing from the Labour gains in these by elections is to set them against their by election gains just before the last time they took over from the Tories
Blair’s party were adding 5000 votes to 92 results in their wins whilst yesterday they added 100 in one and lost 5000 in the other.
Turnouts were 37% compared to 62% in SE Staffs 1996 then 71% in Wirral South 1997
I think that means a likely low turnout in the next GE and room for a surprise 3rd party surge in votes if not seats
You can derive whatever comfort you like from the assertion the sheer number of Labour votes cast doesn't mean they won convincingly or the assertion all the voters who stayed at home were basically Conservatiuves making a protest or the idea evety Reform voter is basically a Conservative who will come back to the blue camp at the General Election.
That's basically all who are opposed to a Labour win at the next election have got.
Perhaps we should also ask why 25,000 who voted Conservative in Wellingborough in December 2019 didn't do so yesterday or the 19,000 who voted Conservative in Kingswood in December 2019 and didn't do so yesterday?
It can't just be about the Labour vote.
I don’t need comforting, I didn’t even remember there were by elections last night until I saw the news this morning. It’s hardly as though I was sweating on the results. I wouldn’t vote conservative in a by election in my own constituency so I know pretty well how 2019 Tory voters felt
But it is true that in comparable by elections in the 92-97 parliament, the Tories were losing votes whilst Labour were adding them; the Tories are losing them now, but Labour aren’t adding them, so I stand by what I said, turnout could be low, and there’s room for a third party to snap up disaffected voters. I don’t see how that is shilling for the Tories., I told you the other day I was unlikely to vote for them, I only ever have once, and that was because I backed Leave & every other party was trying to ignore our win
To be fair, this is a website where we occasionally talk politics (not as much as we used to) so there's been plenty of talk about the by-elections on here (we've not even mentioned the Lib Dem gain from Labour in Hull yesterday).
There's no evidence from yesterday a low turnout election will hurt Labour - as for the "third party", no, what we'll see I suspect is a lot of different second parties going after the incumbent Conservative vote. It'll mostly be Labour, some LDs, the odd Green and Reform if very well organised but the voting pattern of 45-25-11-11 is pretty well set and unless something dramatic happens that's where we are.
I'd put it to you for many the desire to see the Conservatives ejected from office is greater than whatever reservations they may have about Starmer. As to how Starmer will be once in office, that remains to be seen. However, that doesn't invalidate the opportunity he has been given to become Prime Minister nor does it invalidate those who wish to point out any deficiencies they feel he might have.
If I’d said I didn’t think Labour were going to win a majority, or that a low turnout was going to hinder them somehow, all that might have been worth it.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My point is simply that the number of empty bedrooms in the UK has continued to rise, even as we've suffered from a housing shortage.
Time to consider following the precedent set by the bedroom tax / under-occupancy charge (delete according to political preference)?
Charge homeowners additional council tax for each unoccupied bedroom. Tie it to the max UC housing element rate for a single bedroom in that area. Calculate under-occupancy on the same basis as used for UC or housing association rents.
That'd come to £650 for each extra room per month in my area. The median rent for a single room in an HMO is just under £1100, so you should still be able to make a profit by renting it out.
I'm on a train. A group of about three large families got on, with multiple kids. Was prepared for chaos and shouting and dread. Then they talked and chatted in the way of families, and one of the kids got tickled by their mum, with high-pitched giggles. Theres a shit-ton of people in the world tonight who are looking at the mangled wrecks of their homes and families, who would give their left arms to be where I'm sat. Maybe things aren't too bad after all. 😔
Yesterday I visited a NT garden. 4 very young children (who I had just seen get gently told off by their mother/mother's friend) approached me and asked if they could stroke my dog. I said yes, saying he was very friendly, but also very boisterous, but he won't harm you. They were very kind and all thanked me when I left and said goodbye to my dog remembering his name. I felt motivated to change direction and tell their mother how impressed I was with their manners. Made my day.
We find most children ask before they greet our dog, and that’s brilliant. Helps avoid bad situations. Our dog is as soft as anything, but a fairly hefty 40 kg. Quite scary for the younger ones.
40kg?! What breed? Newfoundland?
A rather heavy Spanish Posenco. It may be 30kg, can’t remember exactly, but she is a big girl.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My point is simply that the number of empty bedrooms in the UK has continued to rise, even as we've suffered from a housing shortage.
The proposals I keep arguing for - the Proportional Property Tax ie Council Tax = ~0.5% of house value - have abolition of Stamp Duty as part of the proposal.
Yes that's a reform I'm very much in favour of too. Potentially with the ability to defer payment until the property is sold in certain circumstances (with a fair interest rate e.g. BoE base rate).
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
- A New York judge has ordered Donald Trump to pay more than $350m in a landmark fraud case - The ex-president has also been prohibited from acting as a company director in New York state for three years - His sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, were also fined $4m each and blocked from acting as directors for two years T- rump and his two adult sons had already been found liable of massively inflating the value of their properties by hundreds of millions of dollars in a trial that ended last month https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-68132436
TBH to me that looks mild, and I wonder if the $350m number includes the accumulated 9% per annum compound interest.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My point is simply that the number of empty bedrooms in the UK has continued to rise, even as we've suffered from a housing shortage.
Time to consider following the precedent set by the bedroom tax / under-occupancy charge (delete according to political preference)?
Charge homeowners additional council tax for each unoccupied bedroom. Tie it to the max UC housing element rate for a single bedroom in that area. Calculate under-occupancy on the same basis as used for UC or housing association rents.
That'd come to £650 for each extra room per month in my area. The median rent for a single room in an HMO is just under £1100, so you should still be able to make a profit by renting it out.
As @MattW points out, it can be much simpler than that. Just have property tax linked to property value (rolled forward with some agreed index), which will correlate to size. Larger properties pay more tax, and so that encourages downsizing / efficient usage of a scarce resource when combined with much lower costs of moving without stamp duty.
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
Rishi's recession because he's sunk the economy...
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
Those boomers will be leaving behind large houses that are currently underutilized.
Yup. They will be leaving three bedroomed properties to their three children, their three partners, and each of their two kids, a total of twelve people. That's going to be a heck of an argument.
Now multiply it by ten million.
My point is simply that the number of empty bedrooms in the UK has continued to rise, even as we've suffered from a housing shortage.
Time to consider following the precedent set by the bedroom tax / under-occupancy charge (delete according to political preference)?
Charge homeowners additional council tax for each unoccupied bedroom. Tie it to the max UC housing element rate for a single bedroom in that area. Calculate under-occupancy on the same basis as used for UC or housing association rents.
That'd come to £650 for each extra room per month in my area. The median rent for a single room in an HMO is just under £1100, so you should still be able to make a profit by renting it out.
As @MattW points out, it can be much simpler than that. Just have property tax linked to property value (rolled forward with some agreed index), which will correlate to size. Larger properties pay more tax, and so that encourages downsizing / efficient usage of a scarce resource when combined with much lower costs of moving without stamp duty.
It really would be a win win reform.
The huge overhang of unused bedrooms is small owner-occupying households over-occupying larger houses than bedroom count says they need. Plus second homes.
I'd say the obvious first move on that is to drive rent-a-room tax free allowance harder, and extend it to two lodgers. That will help some poorer pensioners, and home owners who are struggling or stretch themselves to the limit to buy.
I'd also in parallel simplify regulation on small HMOs with 3 (or *maybe* 4) occupants, which are basically the same as a family. The Housing Act 2004 made a dog's breakfast of "Friends style" households.
Labour 'will put Scotland at heart of government' - Anas Sarwar
Scotland will be at the heart of the next UK government if Labour are elected, Anas Sarwar has said.
The Scottish Labour leader told delegates at his party conference that the SNP and the Tories were the "very best of frenemies", using each other as cover for their own failings.
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
Rishi's recession because he's sunk the economy...
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
Can we make that turnout assumption at this time based on a couple of February by elections? Redfield & Wilton poll on a 0-5 likelihood to vote with 5 being Certain to Vote and 73% are either 4 or 5.
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
Is that less than expected. Had seen $550m banded about?
That was my punt from earlier, including compound interest and I was expecting something added on for the items identified in the Monitor's report from a few days ago.
Perhaps there will be another indictment for the rest of this stuff . There's the opportunity that NY could charge him with criminal fraud in addition to this civil fraud - some of the offences have parallels.
And there's a mountain of Jan 6 and Election things that have not been brought out. As Mr Big from Jan 06 I'd be expecting Mr Trump to have some charges around that landing on his doormat in due course, which I don't think have appeared yet.
Edit - I wonder if the comparative leniency of the sentences is designed to make any appeal a risky business. For example, if he appeals and loses could the judges increase the penalties? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
Rishi's recession because he's sunk the economy...
Edit - I wonder if the comparative leniency of the sentences is designed to make any appeal a risky business. For example, if he appeals and loses could the judges increase the penalties? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
Blocked from acting as a Director for 3 years in NY for Mr T, and for 2 years for his sons. I'm not sure how in NY that relates to business licences.
Edit - I wonder if the comparative leniency of the sentences is designed to make any appeal a risky business. For example, if he appeals and loses could the judges increase the penalties? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
Blocked from acting as a Director for 3 years in NY for Mr T, and for 2 years for his sons. I'm not sure how in NY that relates to business licences.
AIUI, they can't run the companies but the companies can still operate under different management with court oversight.
If the licence had been revoked, the company would have had to be wound up.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
Can we make that turnout assumption at this time based on a couple of February by elections? Redfield & Wilton poll on a 0-5 likelihood to vote with 5 being Certain to Vote and 73% are either 4 or 5.
YouGov have 72% in the 7-10 Likelihood to Vote.
Techne have 65% in their 7-10 Likelihood to Vote
Turnout last time was 67%.
I anticipate turnout in the low 60's, maybe 62%. People don't get excited by races that seem a foregone conclusion such as 2005.
The shift in the Tory vote to older C2DE voters isn't going to help them GOTV.
It's shaping up to be a perfect storm for Sunak, with the economy tanking it at the wrong time too.
It's a naive hope that the state of the national finances will be so poor that discontent will send voters back to the party that laid waste to the country. If the Tories recover in a decade they will be doing well, and an extinction level event is quite possible.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Edit - I wonder if the comparative leniency of the sentences is designed to make any appeal a risky business. For example, if he appeals and loses could the judges increase the penalties? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
Blocked from acting as a Director for 3 years in NY for Mr T, and for 2 years for his sons. I'm not sure how in NY that relates to business licences.
The order cancelling their business licenses from last September is vacated, “without prejudice to renewal on the recommendation of the Independent Monitor”.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
He’s a consistent Boris advocate, but I don’t think he has any attachment to the party ? And has even said he’d give (conditional) consideration to rejoining the EU in the right circumstances.
It’s always a temptation to caricature the opinions of those you disagree with (I’m, not infrequently, as guilty as anyone), but it ought to be resisted.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
They have access to finance. The problem is that Council's cannot build and maintain social housing - the rents would not cover the build cost or the maintainence cost; it needs money from government.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
Only a small minority of posters are tribal. Unfortunately, you are part if that small minority.
I'm on a train. A group of about three large families got on, with multiple kids. Was prepared for chaos and shouting and dread. Then they talked and chatted in the way of families, and one of the kids got tickled by their mum, with high-pitched giggles. Theres a shit-ton of people in the world tonight who are looking at the mangled wrecks of their homes and families, who would give their left arms to be where I'm sat. Maybe things aren't too bad after all. 😔
Yesterday I visited a NT garden. 4 very young children (who I had just seen get gently told off by their mother/mother's friend) approached me and asked if they could stroke my dog. I said yes, saying he was very friendly, but also very boisterous, but he won't harm you. They were very kind and all thanked me when I left and said goodbye to my dog remembering his name. I felt motivated to change direction and tell their mother how impressed I was with their manners. Made my day.
We find most children ask before they greet our dog, and that’s brilliant. Helps avoid bad situations. Our dog is as soft as anything, but a fairly hefty 40 kg. Quite scary for the younger ones.
Yes I find that as well. Just these were particularly polite. I must have been approached half a dozen times yesterday. One little girl jumped back as she tapped his head and he lifted it to lick her, but could have been mistaken for a biting move. I reassured her that he doesn't bite and her mum said 'She is ok. She is used to dogs. We have one and he does bite!' Bit worrying!
Ours is only 13 kg but very lively so could knock over a child or elderly person.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
He’s a consistent Boris advocate, but I don’t think he has any attachment to the party ? And has even said he’d give (conditional) consideration to rejoining the EU in the right circumstances.
It’s always a temptation to caricature the opinions of those you disagree with (I’m, not infrequently, as guilty as anyone), but it ought to be resisted.
Labour 'will put Scotland at heart of government' - Anas Sarwar
Scotland will be at the heart of the next UK government if Labour are elected, Anas Sarwar has said.
The Scottish Labour leader told delegates at his party conference that the SNP and the Tories were the "very best of frenemies", using each other as cover for their own failings.
It seems our schools are so strapped for cash that headteachers are writing to parents informing them of cuts in specialist teaching, teacher assistants, class sizes and curriculum
It is not going down well, and ironically private schools are receiving increased enquiries notwithstanding the 20% Labour vat proposals
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
"Quite sweet."
Lol. You're the biggest blind partisan idiot here.
On topic - I think if you just take the BEs of the Sunak era you may get a better idea of where we are. Hartlepool massages the overall figure quite notably for the Cons
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
Rishi's recession because he's sunk the economy...
Or shrunk the economy.
When theTories were elected in 2010, the economy was 2m tall. Now it’s 1.5m with half mast trousers.
It seems our schools are so strapped for cash that headteachers are writing to parents informing them of cuts in specialist teaching, teacher assistants, class sizes and curriculum
It is not going down well, and ironically private schools are receiving increased enquiries notwithstanding the 20% Labour vat proposals
Yet the Tory headbangers think salvation comes from tax cuts. They are as wrong as wrong can be.
Labour 'will put Scotland at heart of government' - Anas Sarwar
Scotland will be at the heart of the next UK government if Labour are elected, Anas Sarwar has said.
The Scottish Labour leader told delegates at his party conference that the SNP and the Tories were the "very best of frenemies", using each other as cover for their own failings.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
They did it until the mid 80s, though - how was it managed back then?
Issue local authority bonds, backed by expected rents over 100 years, perhaps? Finding finance for productive capital projects really ought to be one of the more simple things to sort out...
Comments
He’s not even a Tory voter is he?
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
More than a few signs of desperation from the anti-Labour side on here.
Oddly enough, I got the two results the wrong way round. The Conservatives lost 40% of their 2019 vote in Kingswood - that equates to a national vote share of 27% and ties in with the 30% shown in the Redfield & Wilton Blue Wall polling.
I suspect that's more nationally indicative than Wellingborough which saw a 60% reduction in the Conservative vote - that would mean 18% in a national poll and near extinction for the Tories.
Reform polled solidly in both seats and on that basis you'd expect some third and fourth places especially in Conservative-held seats.
The question now is to what extent will the Conservative seat count be reduced by what might be considered a "perfect storm" of Labour and LD targeted activity in some seats with perhaps the odd Green challenge and a siphoning off of votes on the other flank to Reform giving Labour more chance in the solid eastern and midland Conservative seats.
Starmer is of course delighted but not complacent - the Mail is pleading with Hunt to offer "big" tax cuts but Hunt is perhaps more akin to Ken Clarke in seeing the national economic good above the narrow Party interest than those suddenly seeing a Truss-type Budget as "the answer". Starmer knows the Conservative beast is never more dangerous than when cornered so I'm sure he and Labour will be bracing for an onslught of negative campaigning.
There were only one Con vs Lab contest this close to the 1992 election (in Langbaurgh). The swing to Labour was 3.5% vs 22.5% as the average of the two yesterday.
In the 1992 general election the swing to Labour was 3.5%.
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1758478226286846182
If Rishi and and Conservative Party suddenly discovered Mad Skillz *and* Starmer stands in every turd he can find, *and* the SNP suddenly zooms back in the polls, a small Labour Majority is possible.
I often get tiny blisters on my toes, which don't bother me. It's blisters elsewhere on my feet that get me. On my coastal walk (6,200 miles), I got six of those blisters. Two on the same day, walking around Orme's Head. I'd walked along the beach in trainers, and sand got into them. I then followed the road around the headland, and the sand moved under the arch of my foot and happily created two massive blisters, from one side of my foot to the other. Live and learn...
(*) Experts say never do this, but I've never had any problems.
The one comment I would make, by way of counterpoint though, is that house prices are more affordable now than for many, many years when factored against wage increases, particularly the increase in the minimum wage.
Is Engoron actually going to issue a sentence, or is he just going to keep us all on tenterhooks with the aim of further increasing the interest payable?
As for tax cuts, there hasn't really been space for them anyway, there certainly isn't now.
(Question for those who know... I think the fuel duty freeze is technically only for a year at a time, so each extension costs in the OBR calculations when it's announced.
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/fuel-duties/
How does the size of that relate to the remaining headroom in the Incredible Shrinking Room that Hunt is currently trapped in?)
On my coastal walk, the 'hardest' day I had was from the old church at Tarbert (to the east of Mallaig) to Sourlies along the southern shore of Loch Nevis; from memory, seven miles that took me seven hours. Followed the same day by climbing the beallach into Gleann Meadail (sea level, to 1800 foot) then back to sea level at Inverie. Which was much more climbing, but as there was a path, done in a fraction of the time.
It was nice to end the walk at a pub, though,
Edit: I tend to average about 20 miles a day; I can do a lot more, but I tend to enjoy the apres-walk...
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
Now multiply it by ten million.
But definitely do able.
Speaker Johnson statement on Navalny:
“The United States, and our partners, must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.”
https://twitter.com/maxpcohen/status/1758522975689519165
I think the boomer inheritances will generally be spread around.
That sort of contraction would likely be extremely lumpy in its effects, and you'd end up with mass emigration being at the very top end of what you could hope for, with riots and lynch mobs being rather more likely.
There's a reason why even the Green Party is dominated by 'green growth' and 'bright green' types rather than 'dark green' / degrowth stands of thought!
As for your counterpoint - there can't be many, unfortunately, who can hope to own a home on minimum wage these days. In more than half the country, people on the median salary would struggle to do so. And in the South-East of England, people on twice the median have all but given up hope.
I've got a few days' cushion if I can't keep up the pace; I'd rather finish the walk than gorge in San Sebastian, but I'm pretty confident that I can do it as planned
Thanks to everyone who expressed good wishes wrt the unfortunate incident that happened to me last night.
In hot countries I do max 25km and lounge around all afternoon.
But it is true that in comparable by elections in the 92-97 parliament, the Tories were losing votes whilst Labour were adding them; the Tories are losing them now, but Labour aren’t adding them, so I stand by what I said, turnout could be low, and there’s room for a third party to snap up disaffected voters. I don’t see how that is shilling for the Tories., I told you the other day I was unlikely to vote for them, I only ever have once, and that was because I backed Leave & every other party was trying to ignore our win
* They've alienated the Reform/UKIP wing, by failing to handle legal migration well. (And which they've combined by appearing to have failed with small boats, even as they've done a pretty good job.)
* They've alienated a lot of the Cameroon wing by their appointments, and by looking generally incompetent.
* There's no big bad Corbyn bogeyman
* There's no need to Get Brexit Done
I mean really we need to abolish stamp duty and encourage downsizing before both parents pass away. It's certainly been a factor that has put off my parents (nearly 70) from downsizing from the family home.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Governments really are clueless.
>Ratters
If it helps, the average is probably closer to leaving it to their two children, two partners and three grandchildren.
I mean really we need to abolish stamp duty and encourage downsizing before both parents pass away. It's certainly been a factor that has put off my parents (nearly 70) from downsizing from the family home.
The proposals I keep arguing for - the Proportional Property Tax ie Council Tax = ~0.5% of house value - have abolition of Stamp Duty as part of the proposal.
There are two serious cases against Trump:
(1) The fake electors plan, which is an attack on democracy.
(2) The New York case regarding property valuations: people go to jail for falsifying property valuations to the IRS. I posted a link a month or so ago about a property developer who systematically understated the value of his apartment complexes, saving himself about $3m, and who went to prison for 15 months. (And Trump's case is perhaps 50x more serious.) Similarly, there have been plenty of (poor) people who've gone to jail for fraud for deliberately overstating valuations to get loans.
The documents case and the business records case are junk, and should never have been brought.
There's no evidence from yesterday a low turnout election will hurt Labour - as for the "third party", no, what we'll see I suspect is a lot of different second parties going after the incumbent Conservative vote. It'll mostly be Labour, some LDs, the odd Green and Reform if very well organised but the voting pattern of 45-25-11-11 is pretty well set and unless something dramatic happens that's where we are.
I'd put it to you for many the desire to see the Conservatives ejected from office is greater than whatever reservations they may have about Starmer. As to how Starmer will be once in office, that remains to be seen. However, that doesn't invalidate the opportunity he has been given to become Prime Minister nor does it invalidate those who wish to point out any deficiencies they feel he might have.
Just not sure what's in it yet...
Charge homeowners additional council tax for each unoccupied bedroom. Tie it to the max UC housing element rate for a single bedroom in that area. Calculate under-occupancy on the same basis as used for UC or housing association rents.
That'd come to £650 for each extra room per month in my area. The median rent for a single room in an HMO is just under £1100, so you should still be able to make a profit by renting it out.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
So not quite the top whack, but still definitely an 'ouch' moment for the Trumpster.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
$4 million each for the Minimes as well.
Lab did what they needed to do. These were big majorities to overturn but after a poor two weeks they needed to win both seats to settle nerves and they did so. Good results for them
Cons gave up on Wellingborough and boy did it show. In Kingswood they fought a proper campaign along Uxbridge lines and did rather better. Not nearly as well as in Uxbridge and not nearly well enough to avoid GE defeat but it was better. The swing in Kingswood was still greater than the swing in Wakefield which was considered bad enough to help provoke Johnson's defenestration.
Reform UK are talking up their performances and Kingswood was decent for them. At Wellingborough given the effort they put in and the collapse of the Con vote their return was an under-performance. Peterborough is next door and against a flaccid Con Govt and an unconvincing Lab party the Brexit Party came second there with 28%. 13% isn't breaking the mould of British politics any time soon. On these BE results Reform support seems to be over-stated by most polls.
The other big winner was of course apathy and abstention. It seems certain that the next GE will have a turn-out perhaps lower even than 2001 and 2005. This perhaps solves the mystery of all those 'Don't Knows' (or perhaps Don't Cares) that show up in the polls.
I expect to hear a lot more of that 'Rishi recession' line from Lab MPs. Its the sort of thing that can be very damaging if it sticks.
If he were to be reelected, it wouldn’t even matter.
Two years for the spawn.
- A New York judge has ordered Donald Trump to pay more than $350m in a landmark fraud case
- The ex-president has also been prohibited from acting as a company director in New York state for three years
- His sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, were also fined $4m each and blocked from acting as directors for two years
T- rump and his two adult sons had already been found liable of massively inflating the value of their properties by hundreds of millions of dollars in a trial that ended last month
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-68132436
TBH to me that looks mild, and I wonder if the $350m number includes the accumulated 9% per annum compound interest.
It really would be a win win reform.
I'd say the obvious first move on that is to drive rent-a-room tax free allowance harder, and extend it to two lodgers. That will help some poorer pensioners, and home owners who are struggling or stretch themselves to the limit to buy.
I'd also in parallel simplify regulation on small HMOs with 3 (or *maybe* 4) occupants, which are basically the same as a family. The Housing Act 2004 made a dog's breakfast of "Friends style" households.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-68310764
Labour 'will put Scotland at heart of government' - Anas Sarwar
Scotland will be at the heart of the next UK government if Labour are elected, Anas Sarwar has said.
The Scottish Labour leader told delegates at his party conference that the SNP and the Tories were the "very best of frenemies", using each other as cover for their own failings.
YouGov have 72% in the 7-10 Likelihood to Vote.
Techne have 65% in their 7-10 Likelihood to Vote
Turnout last time was 67%.
And not Trump Tower!
Perhaps there will be another indictment for the rest of this stuff
And there's a mountain of Jan 6 and Election things that have not been brought out. As Mr Big from Jan 06 I'd be expecting Mr Trump to have some charges around that landing on his doormat in due course, which I don't think have appeared yet.
Edit - I wonder if the comparative leniency of the sentences is designed to make any appeal a risky business. For example, if he appeals and loses could the judges increase the penalties? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
If the licence had been revoked, the company would have had to be wound up.
The shift in the Tory vote to older C2DE voters isn't going to help them GOTV.
It's shaping up to be a perfect storm for Sunak, with the economy tanking it at the wrong time too.
It's a naive hope that the state of the national finances will be so poor that discontent will send voters back to the party that laid waste to the country. If the Tories recover in a decade they will be doing well, and an extinction level event is quite possible.
And has even said he’d give (conditional) consideration to rejoining the EU in the right circumstances.
It’s always a temptation to caricature the opinions of those you disagree with (I’m, not infrequently, as guilty as anyone), but it ought to be resisted.
There was uproar last week when Sunak's return showed a tax rate of 23% and in both cases capital gains played a part in their income
In fairness, and for balance, the same critique that was levelled at Sunak should be applied to Starmer
I do not recall either party announcing any changes to these taxation rates to make them fairer
https://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-paid-nearly-163100000-in-tax-last-year-documents-show-13073213
Ours is only 13 kg but very lively so could knock over a child or elderly person.
It is not going down well, and ironically private schools are receiving increased enquiries notwithstanding the 20% Labour vat proposals
Lol. You're the biggest blind partisan idiot here.
By a country mile.
https://twitter.com/Kennyaberdeen/status/1758029417891111151?t=vJNidb2zhgEtVkH8veCGkA&s=19
Issue local authority bonds, backed by expected rents over 100 years, perhaps? Finding finance for productive capital projects really ought to be one of the more simple things to sort out...