We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
What an utter load of toss.
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
My father won the Maths Dux at the local (now prestigious) school. He had to quit right after that as my grandfather broke his back while working on the roads, so was the eldest male and had to get a job.
Oddly, I've ended up with my current senior manager having won the same Maths Dux at the same school. But from a wealthy family who didn't work the roads.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
That's not all they want though. They also want to feel morally superior and this leads them to support policies that are against their economic interests.
Not me, I just want us to have the same opportunities our grandparents had. Like being able to afford a house at a reasonable price, having an NHS that worked properly, having trains that weren't unaffordable for a rubbish service etc.
I am happy to debate the nuances but I completely reject the idea that I want to feel morally superior. When this injustice is solved (if ever, I won't hold my breath) I will gladly go away.
Why are you normally dismissive of immigration as an issue when it is absolutely central to your complaints?
A liberal elite which for years branded as bigots and nativists all those who suggested that the UK wasn't doing a very good job on integrating minority communities is now complaining that thousands of Muslims elected a new MP based on their own sectarian interests. Fancy that.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Don’t give a toss what the grey vote do or want. They’ve had things handed to them forever, forget them
Have you spoken to Starmer about his manifesto commitment to continue the triple lock for his full term in office ?
It's the dumbest policy he has by a country mile. I would dump it immediately.
Have you spoken to your best friend Rishi Sunak? The current PM? The one with the 80 seat majority? Or are you a Johnson fan today? Or Truss again?
I have no contact with them and am not a member of the conservative party, but you maintain you are in Starmers inner circle
I have never said I am in Starmer's inner circle. I said I have friends who know him personally and who I suppose you might say are in his circle but they are just friends he's had over time.
If you are asking me if I have told them that the policy is dumb as fuck then sure but we don't tend to talk about politics unless I specifically bring it up, we're normally at the pub to escape this kind of stuff.
Why are you normally dismissive of immigration as an issue when it is absolutely central to your complaints?
Because I don't think immigrants are the problem. We don't build enough houses.
We don't build enough houses [in order to accomodate the immigrants].
My friends are not immigrants. They cannot afford to buy a house because houses are so expensive that they can't afford it even on a good salary. They are not immigrants. We don't build enough houses.
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
What an utter load of toss.
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
I thought you already own an apartment in Central London albeit with a mortgage
I can just say at no time could we have ever afforded a property in London
A liberal elite which for years branded as bigots and nativists all those who suggested that the UK wasn't doing a very good job on integrating minority communities is now complaining that thousands of Muslims elected a new MP based on their own sectarian interests. Fancy that.
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
What an utter load of toss.
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
I thought you already own an apartment in Central London albeit with a mortgage
I can just say at no time could we have ever afforded a property in London
Yes I was fortunate enough to inherit a sizeable inheritance when a loved one passed away. I am incredibly lucky to have what I have.
Others don't. Without that money I couldn't afford to buy anywhere. The point is that people can't have what you had because you pulled up the drawbridge after sucking society dry.
I don't detest you personally, I don't even know you. But goodness me do I detest a lot of people who say that young people "need to make do and mend" and "anyone can afford a house if they just give up the luxuries" and your rhetoric comes close to that rubbish that I hear all the time.
Also, not in Central London. Also, not sure why you are so obsessed with where I live.
The triple lock and pensions are an important component of welfare spending but still dwarfed by the burden our ageing population places on healthcare. That’s the biggest challenge: in every country in the West (including the US where insurance premiums will just keep rising) and other poorer but ageing countries.
On pensions I would do a deal. The triple lock has become an albatross around the neck and very hard to eliminate. So remove it, replaced by a single lock based on average earnings, but with the incentive of a one-off step change in the pension in year one.
As for healthcare…difficult. Very difficult.
I thought it was the link to earnings that was the expensive part of the triple lock.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Re your last sentence I agree but I just do not see the numbers of homes required being built
Why are you normally dismissive of immigration as an issue when it is absolutely central to your complaints?
Because I don't think immigrants are the problem. We don't build enough houses.
We don't build enough houses [in order to accomodate the immigrants].
And we need to fix that.
Cutting immigration doesn't fix it. There's already an eight million house shortfall, so we need a mammoth building campaign unlike any seen in decades to reverse that shortage. On top of building for future migration.
Or you can identify the twelve million people you'd like to deport.
Why are you normally dismissive of immigration as an issue when it is absolutely central to your complaints?
Because I don't think immigrants are the problem. We don't build enough houses.
We don't build enough houses [in order to accomodate the immigrants].
My friends are not immigrants. They cannot afford to buy a house because houses are so expensive that they can't afford it even on a good salary. They are not immigrants. We don't build enough houses.
I inherited money, I am lucky.
Look at the price of houses in a random London street in the 1990s. The ladder was kicked away relativeley recently.
If you and your friends were only competing with each other, then you wouldn't be in the same position, but you're not.
Why are you normally dismissive of immigration as an issue when it is absolutely central to your complaints?
Because I don't think immigrants are the problem. We don't build enough houses.
We don't build enough houses [in order to accomodate the immigrants].
My friends are not immigrants. They cannot afford to buy a house because houses are so expensive that they can't afford it even on a good salary. They are not immigrants. We don't build enough houses.
I inherited money, I am lucky.
Look at the price of houses in a random London street in the 1990s. The ladder was kicked away relativeley recently.
If you and your friends were only competing with each other, then you wouldn't be in the same position, but you're not.
So the solution is to build millions more houses or deport millions of people.
Which are you advocating?
I know which I advocate for. You seem to be beating about the bush, which is it?
A liberal elite which for years branded as bigots and nativists all those who suggested that the UK wasn't doing a very good job on integrating minority communities is now complaining that thousands of Muslims elected a new MP based on their own sectarian interests. Fancy that.
Well some people are saying the postal votes were not fair & square, but let’s accept that it was; it did strike me as borderline racist, or perhaps anti Muslim, that the mainstream parties are hoo-ha ing about GG’s victory as a dark day. It is what a lot of Muslim’s, who we are told are just as British as the rest of us, want. That’s democracy. It means a divided nation, but that’s what anyone with an ounce, or 28 grams, of foresight could have told you years ago.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
What ladder was your grandmother on if she retired on a state pension in a council house? And why would it take six figures? Retirement now at 60 would need savings to cover seven years until the state pension, say £70,000. It's a nice story but I cannot see what lesson we are supposed to draw.
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
What an utter load of toss.
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
I thought you already own an apartment in Central London albeit with a mortgage
I can just say at no time could we have ever afforded a property in London
Yes I was fortunate enough to inherit a sizeable inheritance when a loved one passed away. I am incredibly lucky to have what I have.
Others don't. Without that money I couldn't afford to buy anywhere. The point is that people can't have what you had because you pulled up the drawbridge after sucking society dry.
I don't detest you personally, I don't even know you. But goodness me do I detest a lot of people who say that young people "need to make do and mend" and "anyone can afford a house if they just give up the luxuries" and your rhetoric comes close to that rubbish that I hear all the time.
Also, not in Central London. Also, not sure why you are so obsessed with where I live.
I am not obsessed where you live but you have said on several occasions you own a London property and it is a fact my wife and I could not have afforded to live in London
Maybe that is the difference and of course very many young people cannot afford a home today and that can only be addressed, as I think we all agree, by a massive house building programme
The triple lock and pensions are an important component of welfare spending but still dwarfed by the burden our ageing population places on healthcare. That’s the biggest challenge: in every country in the West (including the US where insurance premiums will just keep rising) and other poorer but ageing countries.
On pensions I would do a deal. The triple lock has become an albatross around the neck and very hard to eliminate. So remove it, replaced by a single lock based on average earnings, but with the incentive of a one-off step change in the pension in year one.
As for healthcare…difficult. Very difficult.
I thought it was the link to earnings that was the expensive part of the triple lock.
Quite the opposite. If it was only linked to earnings that'd be fine, as earnings go up so do pensions but people can afford that as earnings have risen.
The problem is the other elements combine into a one-way ratchet. Pensions can only become more unaffordable. If earnings are highest, then they don't become more unaffordable but they don't become more affordable either. If earnings are low but inflation is high, then inflation takes them up, making them more unaffordable. If earnings are low and inflation is low then the 2.5% minimum takes them up again still.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
I think it is better to focus on trying to sort out the student loans system, rather than complaining about pensioners. I think the problem is really with affluent pensioners and the low tax rates they benefit from, but it confusingly gets directed at all pensioners.
The situation is not hopeless for the young. Wages are good and in large parts of the country housing is not prohibitively expensive.
Agreed, and it's largely a problem in the south-east of England. There's almost an 'unhappy medium' - people who've studied hard and have done well for themselves and are in the sort of good, stable jobs that only really exist in London, the home counties, Cambridge, and maybe Manchester. Media, arts, civil servants, advertising, lots of ancillary jobs in tech, non-high-flying roles in banking, that sort of stuff.
You can work for the Treasury in Darlington and buy your own house, no problem. Or as a senior nurse in Carlisle, or an economist in Bristol, or as a head of department at a school in Leicester. Excellent, good for you.
But a person on less than six figures in London is likely to feel worse off than someone on a full state pension, unless they've had help from their parents or grandparents to get on the housing ladder.
It all comes down to housing. Fix that, and you fix so many other issues. Don't fix it, and you're fomenting revolution in a decade's time.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
I think it is better to focus on trying to sort out the student loans system, rather than complaining about pensioners. I think the problem is really with affluent pensioners and the low tax rates they benefit from, but it confusingly gets directed at all pensioners.
The situation is not hopeless for the young. Wages are good and in large parts of the country housing is not prohibitively expensive.
Agreed, and it's largely a problem in the south-east of England. There's almost an 'unhappy medium' - people who've studied hard and have done well for themselves and are in the sort of good, stable jobs that only really exist in London, the home counties, Cambridge, and maybe Manchester. Media, arts, civil servants, advertising, lots of ancillary jobs in tech, non-high-flying roles in banking, that sort of stuff.
You can work for the Treasury in Darlington and buy your own house, no problem. Or as a senior nurse in Carlisle, or an economist in Bristol, or as a head of department at a school in Leicester. Excellent, good for you.
But a person on less than six figures in London is likely to feel worse off than someone on a full state pension, unless they've had help from their parents or grandparents to get on the housing ladder.
It all comes down to housing. Fix that, and you fix so many other issues. Don't fix it, and you're fomenting revolution in a decade's time.
There's a naivety in thinking that housing in the north is affordable, its only affordable relative to today's London, its not affordable.
I was talking earlier this week with a colleague who is retiring this year. He bought his first home for £5000 early in his career, the same home today goes for over a quarter of a million. That's here in the north, not down south.
Salaries have not increased fifty-fold in the same time.
The triple lock and pensions are an important component of welfare spending but still dwarfed by the burden our ageing population places on healthcare. That’s the biggest challenge: in every country in the West (including the US where insurance premiums will just keep rising) and other poorer but ageing countries.
On pensions I would do a deal. The triple lock has become an albatross around the neck and very hard to eliminate. So remove it, replaced by a single lock based on average earnings, but with the incentive of a one-off step change in the pension in year one.
As for healthcare…difficult. Very difficult.
I thought it was the link to earnings that was the expensive part of the triple lock.
Quite the opposite. If it was only linked to earnings that'd be fine, as earnings go up so do pensions but people can afford that as earnings have risen.
The problem is the other elements combine into a one-way ratchet. Pensions can only become more unaffordable. If earnings are highest, then they don't become more unaffordable but they don't become more affordable either. If earnings are low but inflation is high, then inflation takes them up, making them more unaffordable. If earnings are low and inflation is low then the 2.5% minimum takes them up again still.
Either way, its a one-way ratchet.
Inflation is surely neutral. The minimum 2.5 per cent rise is just above our target inflation rate and so is not at issue right now, and would not bankrupt us in the near future. It is the link with wages that is problematic and also the reason the triple lock was recently suspended by this government.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
The triple lock and pensions are an important component of welfare spending but still dwarfed by the burden our ageing population places on healthcare. That’s the biggest challenge: in every country in the West (including the US where insurance premiums will just keep rising) and other poorer but ageing countries.
On pensions I would do a deal. The triple lock has become an albatross around the neck and very hard to eliminate. So remove it, replaced by a single lock based on average earnings, but with the incentive of a one-off step change in the pension in year one.
As for healthcare…difficult. Very difficult.
I thought it was the link to earnings that was the expensive part of the triple lock.
Quite the opposite. If it was only linked to earnings that'd be fine, as earnings go up so do pensions but people can afford that as earnings have risen.
The problem is the other elements combine into a one-way ratchet. Pensions can only become more unaffordable. If earnings are highest, then they don't become more unaffordable but they don't become more affordable either. If earnings are low but inflation is high, then inflation takes them up, making them more unaffordable. If earnings are low and inflation is low then the 2.5% minimum takes them up again still.
Either way, its a one-way ratchet.
Inflation is surely neutral. The minimum 2.5 per cent rise is just above our target inflation rate and so is not at issue right now, and would not bankrupt us in the near future. It is the link with wages that is problematic and also the reason the triple lock was recently suspended by this government.
No, inflation is absolutely not neutral if earnings are below inflation.
Inflation is a flawed measure as it only captures certain prices and excludes others. Eg housing is excluded from inflation, so we've had decades when inflation if you pay for housing is bloody expensive but the Bank of England operates based on homeowners inflation so said it was low.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
300k homes is nowhere near enough, I completely agree.
We need to be looking at a million plus homes a year.
654,00 pa in England alone in the next decade apparently
Not sure there is the building capacity - you cannot get builders, plumbers, electricians or roofers now if you want one without weeks, if not months of delay
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
So, in 2010 - when the Euro was already a disaster-zone, and the UK support for joining it had collapsed to near zero - the OBR was created to prepare the UK for joining the Euro?
Really?
Since when have the EU and its supporters let lack of public enthusiasm get in their way?
So, there is no evidence for your assertion.
I'm glad we've cleared that up.
I suppose the idea is that if you can put it about that the OBR has some secret malign agenda, then it might make Liz Truss's disparagement of it seems less unhinged than it actually is.
The purpose of the pact was to ensure that fiscal discipline would be maintained and enforced in the EMU.[6] All EU member states are automatically members of both the EMU and the SGP, as this is defined by paragraphs in the EU Treaty itself. The fiscal discipline is ensured by the SGP by requiring each Member State, to implement a fiscal policy aiming for the country to stay within the limits on government deficit (3% of GDP) and debt (60% of GDP); and in case of having a debt level above 60% it should each year decline with a satisfactory pace towards a level below. As outlined by the "preventive arm" regulation, all EU member states are each year obliged to submit a SGP compliance report for the scrutiny and evaluation of the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, that will present the country's expected fiscal development for the current and subsequent three years. These reports are called "stability programmes" for eurozone Member States and "convergence programmes" for non-eurozone Member States, but despite having different titles they are identical in regards of the content.
We use our public finance forecasts to judge the Government’s performance against its fiscal targets. In February 2023 the Government set itself a new mandate for fiscal policy: to have public sector net debt (excluding the Bank of England) as a percentage of GDP falling by the fifth year of the rolling forecast period. The fiscal mandate is accompanied by two supplementary targets: for public sector net borrowing to be below 3 per cent of GDP in the fifth year of the rolling forecast period and to ensure that a subset of welfare spending is contained within a predetermined cap and margin set by the Treasury.
You really think in the most utterly stupid, simplistic terms. You read like Twitter. You think in 'optics'. Exercise your brain.
So, the fact that the number "3" occurs twice is clear evidence?
Um, the fact that the fiscal target of having net debt/deficit at 3% of GDP is exactly the same target that was specified in the EU stability pact that obliged member states to meet that target and establish reporting bodies to show their compliance, is fairly clear evidence, unless of course you believe that the topping wheeze of setting up such a body to do exactly the same thing occurred to Osborne in a dream at exactly the same time.
shock horror that an institution with a mandate to show a budget is reasonable has metrics to show such reasonableness. You really are a Trussian fruitloop.
PB shrewdies are a genuinely hilarious bunch. SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE FOR YOUR RIDICULOUS ASSERTION! *Show them* OH JUST THAT EVIDENCE, WELL THAT'S JUST SENSIBLE AND A GOOD THING!!1! FRUITLOOP!1!!
All right dears. Actually I didn't pass judgement on the desirability or otherwise of keeping deficits below 3% of GDP, I am suggesting that their mandate is anachronistic because it doesn't include a whole raft of targets, such as growth in the economy, which events have shown us are far more important than the 3%.
No, you were suggesting that the OBR 'was set up to ensure that the UK's budgets prepared us for the Euro'.
It's been clear since October 1997 that we weren't going to do that. The OBR dates from 2010, long after the debate over Euro membership had been settled.
And as I have said, those who supported Britain's entry into Europe's schemes have never been a whit abashed by the public's repeatedly expressed distaste for the project. You are assuming they said 'Oh OK then' and accepted it would never happen; I have demonstrated that they then continued to put in place the mechanisms and institutions called for by the growth and stability pact. You may consider my opinion cynical - I consider yours naive.
The EU army is another such project. Somehow we're still in that, despite not even being in the pissing EU, with the threat of Mad Vlad sending tank columns on Paris as the motivation du jour.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
The triple lock and pensions are an important component of welfare spending but still dwarfed by the burden our ageing population places on healthcare. That’s the biggest challenge: in every country in the West (including the US where insurance premiums will just keep rising) and other poorer but ageing countries.
On pensions I would do a deal. The triple lock has become an albatross around the neck and very hard to eliminate. So remove it, replaced by a single lock based on average earnings, but with the incentive of a one-off step change in the pension in year one.
As for healthcare…difficult. Very difficult.
I thought it was the link to earnings that was the expensive part of the triple lock.
Quite the opposite. If it was only linked to earnings that'd be fine, as earnings go up so do pensions but people can afford that as earnings have risen.
The problem is the other elements combine into a one-way ratchet. Pensions can only become more unaffordable. If earnings are highest, then they don't become more unaffordable but they don't become more affordable either. If earnings are low but inflation is high, then inflation takes them up, making them more unaffordable. If earnings are low and inflation is low then the 2.5% minimum takes them up again still.
Either way, its a one-way ratchet.
Inflation is surely neutral. The minimum 2.5 per cent rise is just above our target inflation rate and so is not at issue right now, and would not bankrupt us in the near future. It is the link with wages that is problematic and also the reason the triple lock was recently suspended by this government.
No, inflation is absolutely not neutral if earnings are below inflation.
Inflation is a flawed measure as it only captures certain prices and excludes others. Eg housing is excluded from inflation, so we've had decades when inflation if you pay for housing is bloody expensive but the Bank of England operates based on homeowners inflation so said it was low.
All economic statistics are rubbish. Inflation would be neutral given an ideal definition and measure of inflation.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
What ladder was your grandmother on if she retired on a state pension in a council house? And why would it take six figures? Retirement now at 60 would need savings to cover seven years until the state pension, say £70,000. It's a nice story but I cannot see what lesson we are supposed to draw.
She's been very lucky to have retired at the time she did, that's for certain. But also, in many ways, she was unlucky to have been denied a great many opportunities earlier in her life.
Today, you'd expect someone like her to be able to have a fulfilling career that pays relatively well - indeed, her children and grandchildren have mostly done just that.
I would much rather have a situation in which we were all able to work hard to support ourselves and to build something for the future. I have no problem with people who are on benefits of whatever sort, or who inherit however much from their family. But that must not crowd out the ability of people to work for themselves - otherwise, we tip our society into a spiral of decline, where half the population has no hope of advancement no matter how much effort they put in.
The triple lock and pensions are an important component of welfare spending but still dwarfed by the burden our ageing population places on healthcare. That’s the biggest challenge: in every country in the West (including the US where insurance premiums will just keep rising) and other poorer but ageing countries.
On pensions I would do a deal. The triple lock has become an albatross around the neck and very hard to eliminate. So remove it, replaced by a single lock based on average earnings, but with the incentive of a one-off step change in the pension in year one.
As for healthcare…difficult. Very difficult.
I thought it was the link to earnings that was the expensive part of the triple lock.
Quite the opposite. If it was only linked to earnings that'd be fine, as earnings go up so do pensions but people can afford that as earnings have risen.
The problem is the other elements combine into a one-way ratchet. Pensions can only become more unaffordable. If earnings are highest, then they don't become more unaffordable but they don't become more affordable either. If earnings are low but inflation is high, then inflation takes them up, making them more unaffordable. If earnings are low and inflation is low then the 2.5% minimum takes them up again still.
Either way, its a one-way ratchet.
Inflation is surely neutral. The minimum 2.5 per cent rise is just above our target inflation rate and so is not at issue right now, and would not bankrupt us in the near future. It is the link with wages that is problematic and also the reason the triple lock was recently suspended by this government.
No, inflation is absolutely not neutral if earnings are below inflation.
Inflation is a flawed measure as it only captures certain prices and excludes others. Eg housing is excluded from inflation, so we've had decades when inflation if you pay for housing is bloody expensive but the Bank of England operates based on homeowners inflation so said it was low.
All economic statistics are rubbish. Inflation would be neutral given an ideal definition and measure of inflation.
But we don't have an ideal definition and measure, we have what we have, and what we have is not ideal.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
I think it is better to focus on trying to sort out the student loans system, rather than complaining about pensioners. I think the problem is really with affluent pensioners and the low tax rates they benefit from, but it confusingly gets directed at all pensioners.
The situation is not hopeless for the young. Wages are good and in large parts of the country housing is not prohibitively expensive.
Agreed, and it's largely a problem in the south-east of England. There's almost an 'unhappy medium' - people who've studied hard and have done well for themselves and are in the sort of good, stable jobs that only really exist in London, the home counties, Cambridge, and maybe Manchester. Media, arts, civil servants, advertising, lots of ancillary jobs in tech, non-high-flying roles in banking, that sort of stuff.
You can work for the Treasury in Darlington and buy your own house, no problem. Or as a senior nurse in Carlisle, or an economist in Bristol, or as a head of department at a school in Leicester. Excellent, good for you.
But a person on less than six figures in London is likely to feel worse off than someone on a full state pension, unless they've had help from their parents or grandparents to get on the housing ladder.
It all comes down to housing. Fix that, and you fix so many other issues. Don't fix it, and you're fomenting revolution in a decade's time.
I agree that housing needs to be fixed urgently - but I am not totally in agreement with your comments. The people you are referring to could always buy a house in Watford, Slough, Rochester, Gravesend etc.
What is surprising is the actual demographics of London. A lot of people are not in the category you describe and are actually on low incomes. The housing situation is particularly bad for them.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Australia has its own housing crisis, spurred by the generous visa conditions that I am currently taking advantage of.
It suffers the same flaws as the UK - economic growth is centred in a few large cities and housing is very low density.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
What housing shortage? Okay, so a few millennials are still living with their parents. If mum and dad have got a spare room then it's a better use of space for someone to be living in it than turning it into a study. What's the problem here?
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
The Climate Change Act and various other Net Zero garbage is going to take that crown soon I think. But I agree it will be close.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
That's a misunderstanding of economics. There isn't a precisely quantifiable 'shortage'.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
What housing shortage? Okay, so a few millennials are still living with their parents. If mum and dad have got a spare room then it's a better use of space for someone to be living in it than turning it into a study. What's the problem here?
Hinders procreation somewhat, if you’re in a shared house until you’re 40…
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
What housing shortage? Okay, so a few millennials are still living with their parents. If mum and dad have got a spare room then it's a better use of space for someone to be living in it than turning it into a study. What's the problem here?
Millennials aren't children, we're in our thirties and forties now, with children of our own.
Sadly yes I know many millennials who do live with their parents. Sharing one bedroom with their own kids, because that's all that's available.
But hey, the grandparents lack a study so "what housing shortage"?
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
I think it is better to focus on trying to sort out the student loans system, rather than complaining about pensioners. I think the problem is really with affluent pensioners and the low tax rates they benefit from, but it confusingly gets directed at all pensioners.
The situation is not hopeless for the young. Wages are good and in large parts of the country housing is not prohibitively expensive.
Agreed, and it's largely a problem in the south-east of England. There's almost an 'unhappy medium' - people who've studied hard and have done well for themselves and are in the sort of good, stable jobs that only really exist in London, the home counties, Cambridge, and maybe Manchester. Media, arts, civil servants, advertising, lots of ancillary jobs in tech, non-high-flying roles in banking, that sort of stuff.
You can work for the Treasury in Darlington and buy your own house, no problem. Or as a senior nurse in Carlisle, or an economist in Bristol, or as a head of department at a school in Leicester. Excellent, good for you.
But a person on less than six figures in London is likely to feel worse off than someone on a full state pension, unless they've had help from their parents or grandparents to get on the housing ladder.
It all comes down to housing. Fix that, and you fix so many other issues. Don't fix it, and you're fomenting revolution in a decade's time.
I agree that housing needs to be fixed urgently - but I am not totally in agreement with your comments. The people you are referring to could always buy a house in Watford, Slough, Rochester, Gravesend etc.
What is surprising is the actual demographics of London. A lot of people are not in the category you describe and are actually on low incomes. The housing situation is particularly bad for them.
Sure, we have lots of people who are in social housing - I've lived on estates where more than 75% of the flats are still local authority-owned. They're often elderly or are families with young children who face many of the cliff edges and disincentives that we've discussed before.
Then there are vast swathes of people who are in shared housing. Personally, I hate that, and am to a large extent responsible for screwing myself up financially by living in studio flat by myself. But most people in their 20s and 30s share - some in an HMO, some in a shared tenancy. Usually with two adults sharing a bedroom, sometimes with four.
Beyond that, you have the horrors that everyone knows about. Three bunkbeds in a garden shed, time-shared between 18 people. Warehouses filled with tents. Rooms that are only available for six hours a day. A room available on weekdays only, as long as you do 3 hours of unpaid childminding each day.
The demand for housing is so high that we can't fix the problem with Help to Buy loans or mass deportations - we need to fix supply.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
What housing shortage? Okay, so a few millennials are still living with their parents. If mum and dad have got a spare room then it's a better use of space for someone to be living in it than turning it into a study. What's the problem here?
Hinders procreation somewhat, if you’re in a shared house until you’re 40…
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
That's a misunderstanding of economics. There isn't a precisely quantifiable 'shortage'.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
That's a misunderstanding of economics. There isn't a precisely quantifiable 'shortage'.
There is a quantifiable shortage, precision varies depending upon your criteria and assumptions same as all economics, but estimates range between 4 million and 10 million home shortage depending upon how you quantify it.
Either way, its an order of magnitude greater than anything you're proposing and you know it, you just want to fly a flag of "its immigrants fault" but its not. Housing is the problem and even if migration became zero, it remains a problem.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Re your last sentence I agree but I just do not see the numbers of homes required being built
We rebuilt the entire South East between 1946 and 1979. You remember old episodes of the Sweeney and the Professionals? Meetings in roofless factories, decayed with dripping water? Kids playing in bomb sites? They disappeared over time. The one thing humans can do is build houses and, regardless of cyber-this and AI-that, we can still put brick A on brick B. All we need is the will to do so.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Re your last sentence I agree but I just do not see the numbers of homes required being built
We rebuilt the entire South East between 1946 and 1979. You remember old episodes of the Sweeney and the Professionals? Meetings in roofless factories, decayed with dripping water? Kids playing in bomb sites? They disappeared over time. The one thing humans can do is build houses and, regardless of cyber-this and AI-that, we can still put brick A on brick B. All we need is the will to do so.
Repeal all town and planning acts and the problem will be rapidly solved.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Re your last sentence I agree but I just do not see the numbers of homes required being built
We rebuilt the entire South East between 1946 and 1979. You remember old episodes of the Sweeney and the Professionals? Meetings in roofless factories, decayed with dripping water? Kids playing in bomb sites? They disappeared over time. The one thing humans can do is build houses and, regardless of cyber-this and AI-that, we can still put brick A on brick B. All we need is the will to do so.
Repeal all town and planning acts and the problem will be rapidly solved.
That's very wishful thinking. Even without any planning constraints, new housing of good quality would be expensive.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
What housing shortage? Okay, so a few millennials are still living with their parents. If mum and dad have got a spare room then it's a better use of space for someone to be living in it than turning it into a study. What's the problem here?
Millennials aren't children, we're in our thirties and forties now, with children of our own.
Sadly yes I know many millennials who do live with their parents. Sharing one bedroom with their own kids, because that's all that's available.
But hey, the grandparents lack a study so "what housing shortage"?
Idiot! 🤦♂️
So your millennial friends who still live with their parents: what's the story here? Do they literally not earn enough to be able to rent somewhere?
A liberal elite which for years branded as bigots and nativists all those who suggested that the UK wasn't doing a very good job on integrating minority communities is now complaining that thousands of Muslims elected a new MP based on their own sectarian interests. Fancy that.
A liberal elite which for years branded as bigots and nativists all those who suggested that the UK wasn't doing a very good job on integrating minority communities is now complaining that thousands of Muslims elected a new MP based on their own sectarian interests. Fancy that.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Even if we achieved negative net migration of 50k per year it would take half a century to reverse our housing shortage.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
What housing shortage? Okay, so a few millennials are still living with their parents. If mum and dad have got a spare room then it's a better use of space for someone to be living in it than turning it into a study. What's the problem here?
Millennials aren't children, we're in our thirties and forties now, with children of our own.
Sadly yes I know many millennials who do live with their parents. Sharing one bedroom with their own kids, because that's all that's available.
But hey, the grandparents lack a study so "what housing shortage"?
Idiot! 🤦♂️
So your millennial friends who still live with their parents: what's the story here? Do they literally not earn enough to be able to rent somewhere?
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Re your last sentence I agree but I just do not see the numbers of homes required being built
We rebuilt the entire South East between 1946 and 1979. You remember old episodes of the Sweeney and the Professionals? Meetings in roofless factories, decayed with dripping water? Kids playing in bomb sites? They disappeared over time. The one thing humans can do is build houses and, regardless of cyber-this and AI-that, we can still put brick A on brick B. All we need is the will to do so.
Obviously I'm biased by being on record as being a YIMBY, but even if we consider some of the hurdles to swift planning do have some justification and benefit, surely the dial has gone over too far?
It genuinely seems to be the case that any project, big or small, is seen as a major hassle and take such a long time. It goes well beyond planning and construction, I'm not some natural pessimist but anything from building a hospital to filling in a pothole to just creating basic processes for some policy or another seems to be beyond us as a nation right now.
It's really depressing and makes politics really downbeat, because we're not just doubtful of extravagant claims from politicians, we have good reason to doubt even the non-extravagant claims!
A liberal elite which for years branded as bigots and nativists all those who suggested that the UK wasn't doing a very good job on integrating minority communities is now complaining that thousands of Muslims elected a new MP based on their own sectarian interests. Fancy that.
Sectarian interests you say. Your implication is that of a new phenomenon imported from overseas.
You can't have heard of a little corner of the UK called Northern Ireland.
Paying every pissant “community organiser” 6 figures so that they each have a large anthill to piss from *and* we have a “Peace Process” is unaffordable at the scale of the whole U.K.
I had no idea the difference between the two was so great. How can that possibly be justified?
Because young people and poor people either vote less or vote for losing parties. If they all voted the Tories could never do this again.
I really hope in opposition the Tories actually think about what they are for. But I am sceptical if they think they can bribe the elderly again.
I really am sick of it.
I don't understand why you make the state pension the focus of your ire. It's not enough for anybody to live the life of Riley on.
For a completely arbitrary example, take the case of my granny.
She's recently turned 90. Still fairly spritely for her age, though she has slowed down a bit in the past couple of years. Left school at 15 rather than the usual 14 because she was considered brainy. Worked in what was then considered a high-status job in a chemist's shop. Left work in her early 20s to get married, and had three kids. Her husband worked as a joiner in the shipyard but was injured when the youngest of the kids was still a baby, and passed away a few years later. She found work as a cleaner - the only job available to her given the stigma of being a single parent - at a local bank branch, and then later at a primary school. Did O Levels at night school, then an access course, foundation course, and a degree through the OU. Retired at 60(!). Has lived for almost 60 years in the same 3 bedroom end terrace council house, with a double garden.
Talk to her now, and she'll tell you that she's had "a good wee life" in retirement. She's worked hard all her life, and absolutely no-one begrudges her what she has today.
But what would it take for a 30 year old today to be able to provide for anything approaching that "good wee life" in their retirement?
Six figures? Maybe more, especially if they wanted to have kids? This is the problem: opportunities that used to exist are no longer there. All that the young are asking for is the chance to get on the ladder - nothing more.
When people say "we lived within our means" I can always tell what they are going to say next, something about eating fewer avocados or getting Pret less is what naturally follows as advice on how to live.
The reality is that even if you live within your means today you will not be able to afford to have what our grandparents had.
I loved and miss my grandmother every day of my life and I am very sorry she isn't around anymore but she had this view and it was something I could never shake off as being incredibly unaware and frankly I felt a bit disrespected and condescended by it. All younger people want is the same chance others have. They are not getting it.
You are mistaking the generations
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
The reason more is thrown away today is it's cheaper to replace some items as their cost has come down so much, while the cost of repair bills has gone up. So recycling something that's broken down can be cheaper than replacing it.
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
Re your last sentence I agree but I just do not see the numbers of homes required being built
We rebuilt the entire South East between 1946 and 1979. You remember old episodes of the Sweeney and the Professionals? Meetings in roofless factories, decayed with dripping water? Kids playing in bomb sites? They disappeared over time. The one thing humans can do is build houses and, regardless of cyber-this and AI-that, we can still put brick A on brick B. All we need is the will to do so.
Obviously I'm biased by being on record as being a YIMBY, but even if we consider some of the hurdles to swift planning do have some justification and benefit, surely the dial has gone over too far?
It genuinely seems to be the case that any project, big or small, is seen as a major hassle and take such a long time. It goes well beyond planning and construction, I'm not some natural pessimist but anything from building a hospital to filling in a pothole to just creating basic processes for some policy or another seems to be beyond us as a nation right now.
It's really depressing and makes politics really downbeat, because we're not just doubtful of extravagant claims from politicians, we have good reason to doubt even the non-extravagant claims!
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
What an utter load of toss.
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
Single glazing? House without a central heating system? 83% (iirc) top rate of income tax?
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
Biden is perfectly able to improve controls at the border.
It's only weeks since Biden brought forward a bipartisan Democrat-Republican proposal to do just that.
But Trump told the MAGA Republicans in Congress to stop it as he wanted to use a 'failed border' caused by him, which he hopes the Electorate will not notice, as a wedge issue at the Election. So they stopped it and went on holiday.
And he cares more about his wedge issue than he does about the border.
Unfortunately Republicans are so far down the Zombie Route that they lost their moral compass long ago, and either don't see it or do see it and don't give a damn.
We did not live in today's must have consumer world and we made do not least mending and repairing rather than throwing away for the latest gizmo
I would not presume to tell todays generation how to live but can recount our own 60 plus years of wedded experience
What an utter load of toss.
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
"Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away."
Point of order: Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because they were forced to.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
Because housing construction rates didn't keep up with population growth.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
It's a false dichotomy. You can't build enough to catch up if we carry on with rates of immigration like we have now.
Sure we can, if we build faster.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Why not do both?
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
Australia has its own housing crisis, spurred by the generous visa conditions that I am currently taking advantage of.
It suffers the same flaws as the UK - economic growth is centred in a few large cities and housing is very low density.
I am currently in Sydney. The authorities recently began a programme of high rise developments around transport hubs. In passing I could happily live in a suburb like Wentworth Falls or Lawson up in the Blue Mountains with easy access to the city.
The housing crisis could be fixed as easily as it was started.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980 Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Why did rates of ownership among young people only drop off a cliff after 1997?
According to your graph they started dropping in the early 90s, and actually rose in the late 90s.
Comments
Just today I fixed a lamp I've had for 20 years rather than chuck it away. I have had the same laptop since 2013. The same TV for 8 years etc. I don't want a new car, I don't even own a car in the first place.
Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because so many people want to keep them and not throw them away.
You have completely proven my point. Don't educate us on how to live, we just want what you had. That's it.
Oddly, I've ended up with my current senior manager having won the same Maths Dux at the same school. But from a wealthy family who didn't work the roads.
Funny old thing, life.
https://x.com/paulembery/status/1764048181661204972?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
The biggest problem is housing. 40 years ago you could buy a house on a single income at 2-3x income. Today with 2 incomes you can't buy a house as deposits and rents are so high and prices are now 8x income instead of below 3x income.
Getting house prices back to below 3x income should be a national priority and would fix much that's wrong with the economy.
I inherited money, I am lucky.
I can just say at no time could we have ever afforded a property in London
Others don't. Without that money I couldn't afford to buy anywhere. The point is that people can't have what you had because you pulled up the drawbridge after sucking society dry.
I don't detest you personally, I don't even know you. But goodness me do I detest a lot of people who say that young people "need to make do and mend" and "anyone can afford a house if they just give up the luxuries" and your rhetoric comes close to that rubbish that I hear all the time.
Also, not in Central London. Also, not sure why you are so obsessed with where I live.
Bring it on.
Currently watching some old Conservative party political broadcasts (cos I’m all about fun) and came across this one from 2011.
I…think it’s quite good?
https://x.com/tomhulme79/status/1763660005620740578?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Cutting immigration doesn't fix it. There's already an eight million house shortfall, so we need a mammoth building campaign unlike any seen in decades to reverse that shortage. On top of building for future migration.
Or you can identify the twelve million people you'd like to deport.
If you and your friends were only competing with each other, then you wouldn't be in the same position, but you're not.
Which are you advocating?
I know which I advocate for. You seem to be beating about the bush, which is it?
Maybe that is the difference and of course very many young people cannot afford a home today and that can only be addressed, as I think we all agree, by a massive house building programme
The problem is the other elements combine into a one-way ratchet. Pensions can only become more unaffordable. If earnings are highest, then they don't become more unaffordable but they don't become more affordable either. If earnings are low but inflation is high, then inflation takes them up, making them more unaffordable. If earnings are low and inflation is low then the 2.5% minimum takes them up again still.
Either way, its a one-way ratchet.
You can work for the Treasury in Darlington and buy your own house, no problem. Or as a senior nurse in Carlisle, or an economist in Bristol, or as a head of department at a school in Leicester. Excellent, good for you.
But a person on less than six figures in London is likely to feel worse off than someone on a full state pension, unless they've had help from their parents or grandparents to get on the housing ladder.
It all comes down to housing. Fix that, and you fix so many other issues. Don't fix it, and you're fomenting revolution in a decade's time.
I was talking earlier this week with a colleague who is retiring this year. He bought his first home for £5000 early in his career, the same home today goes for over a quarter of a million. That's here in the north, not down south.
Salaries have not increased fifty-fold in the same time.
Housing needs fixing across the entire country.
This housing deficit would take at least half a century to fill even if the Government current target of 300,000 homes per year was reached
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached.
We need to be looking at a million plus homes a year.
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/#:~:text=Compared to the average European,homes a year is reached
Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980
Using newly available data on housing that was collected after the Second World War by the United Nations, it is now possible to explore whether Britain’s housing supply issues began after 1980 with Right to Buy and a subsequent decline of council housebuilding, or whether it began shortly after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was introduced.
This report uses this new data and other sources to compare British housebuilding and outcomes to that in Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, (West) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1955 to 2015. It finds that Britain’s housing shortage began at the beginning of the post-war period, not at its conclusion.
Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act, it was the most damaging piece of legislation ever introduced.
Inflation is a flawed measure as it only captures certain prices and excludes others. Eg housing is excluded from inflation, so we've had decades when inflation if you pay for housing is bloody expensive but the Bank of England operates based on homeowners inflation so said it was low.
No reason at all it couldn't be achieved either.
We can't turn the clock back 30 years. Even if we drop immigration to zero today, we still have a shortage of millions of homes.
So do you want to build millions of homes? Or cut immigration to zero and deport millions of people?
"Immigration" is not the problem, the housing shortage is the problem, and that can only be fixed by mass deportations or mass construction. I support one of those solutions and am explicit about which, what about you?
The EU army is another such project. Somehow we're still in that, despite not even being in the pissing EU, with the threat of Mad Vlad sending tank columns on Paris as the motivation du jour.
Build a million homes a year and have 600k net migration a year and living standards would be improving.
The key is we need to be building and we need to be building much, much more than net migration to close the gap. So whatever net migration is, is rather irrelevant, its the getting building which is key.
Today, you'd expect someone like her to be able to have a fulfilling career that pays relatively well - indeed, her children and grandchildren have mostly done just that.
I would much rather have a situation in which we were all able to work hard to support ourselves and to build something for the future. I have no problem with people who are on benefits of whatever sort, or who inherit however much from their family. But that must not crowd out the ability of people to work for themselves - otherwise, we tip our society into a spiral of decline, where half the population has no hope of advancement no matter how much effort they put in.
So yes, in the real world, its a problem.
What is surprising is the actual demographics of London. A lot of people are not in the category you describe and are actually on low incomes. The housing situation is particularly bad for them.
Australia needs people. What would you say to a new ten pound pom scheme to help them and us? If we could achieve negative net migration, then the housing problem would take care of itself.
The only solution is to build more houses, so stop dicking around and get on with it.
It suffers the same flaws as the UK - economic growth is centred in a few large cities and housing is very low density.
Sadly yes I know many millennials who do live with their parents. Sharing one bedroom with their own kids, because that's all that's available.
But hey, the grandparents lack a study so "what housing shortage"?
Idiot! 🤦♂️
Then there are vast swathes of people who are in shared housing. Personally, I hate that, and am to a large extent responsible for screwing myself up financially by living in studio flat by myself. But most people in their 20s and 30s share - some in an HMO, some in a shared tenancy. Usually with two adults sharing a bedroom, sometimes with four.
Beyond that, you have the horrors that everyone knows about. Three bunkbeds in a garden shed, time-shared between 18 people. Warehouses filled with tents. Rooms that are only available for six hours a day. A room available on weekdays only, as long as you do 3 hours of unpaid childminding each day.
The demand for housing is so high that we can't fix the problem with Help to Buy loans or mass deportations - we need to fix supply.
Either way, its an order of magnitude greater than anything you're proposing and you know it, you just want to fly a flag of "its immigrants fault" but its not. Housing is the problem and even if migration became zero, it remains a problem.
You can't have heard of a little corner of the UK called Northern Ireland.
It genuinely seems to be the case that any project, big or small, is seen as a major hassle and take such a long time. It goes well beyond planning and construction, I'm not some natural pessimist but anything from building a hospital to filling in a pothole to just creating basic processes for some policy or another seems to be beyond us as a nation right now.
It's really depressing and makes politics really downbeat, because we're not just doubtful of extravagant claims from politicians, we have good reason to doubt even the non-extravagant claims!
Worse than the triple lock
House without a central heating system?
83% (iirc) top rate of income tax?
Fair enough...
It's only weeks since Biden brought forward a bipartisan Democrat-Republican proposal to do just that.
But Trump told the MAGA Republicans in Congress to stop it as he wanted to use a 'failed border' caused by him, which he hopes the Electorate will not notice, as a wedge issue at the Election. So they stopped it and went on holiday.
And he cares more about his wedge issue than he does about the border.
Unfortunately Republicans are so far down the Zombie Route that they lost their moral compass long ago, and either don't see it or do see it and don't give a damn.
PM waiting for you.
Point of order: Apple just introduced the ability to repair their laptops because they were forced to.
https://www.thurrott.com/apple/186946/apple-is-taking-away-your-ability-to-repair-your-own-laptop
https://repair.eu/news/apples-self-repair-programme-is-not-the-right-to-repair-we-need/
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