Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osborne share most of the blame for deliberately inflating demand (both physical and financial) for housing assets with loose monetary policy and mass immigration.
They are partly to blame, but it is the Tories under Boris, Truss and Sunak who have let immigration explode to even greater and more absurd levels: 1.4m in two years. Blair could only dream of that (and probably did)
One substantive point in Reeves speech last night was a promise to change the planning system and remove barriers to construction and development. Its been promised before but it would be a great thing for the new government to achieve because it could make a material difference to growth.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
One substantive point in Reeves speech last night was a promise to change the planning system and remove barriers to construction and development. Its been promised before but it would be a great thing for the new government to achieve because it could make a material difference to growth.
David,
Bojo was going to do the same until the Tories lost the Chesham by election.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osborne share most of the blame for deliberately inflating demand (both physical and financial) for housing assets with loose monetary policy and mass immigration.
They are partly to blame, but it is the Tories under Boris, Truss and Sunak who have let immigration explode to even greater and more absurd levels: 1.4m in two years. Blair could only dream of that (and probably did)
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
There have always been estates shoddily constructed by speculative housebuilders. I live in one of them - constructed in a hurry in the 1860s for the new money up the hill from Deptford docks, the suburban executive homes of their day. they didn't even pin the walls and floors together, just put up 4 walls and hung the floors inside them. As a result lots of the houses on our street have toppling front or back walls that can lean a foot or two out at the top. They also had pretty basic foundations and tend to heave and subside on the London clay.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
Somewhat false equivalence between the odious Crosby and @iSam and @MrEd.
Rod Crosby was a virulent antisemite and Holocaust-denier. "Provocative opinions" underplays it somewhat.
My guess having read the final few posts of Truman was that he was becoming so obviously artificial as well as spammy that the mods decided enough was enough. The concern-trolling was ramping up, it was mainly just pasted material from other websites, and it was starting to look very bot-like (real bot - there were certainly stylistic hints this might be the case - or paid human bot).
That's what distinguished DJ41 from the others. Yes some fruity views on a range of things and very clearly Russia-aligned, but an actual human who applied his brain to posts and wrote eloquently.
You genuinely think he was AI?
Surely not. His long ten paragraph description of life and poverty in provincial Russia sounded like a real human to me, 100%, and also like someone with genuine and deep experience of Russia, The way he joked about Kalmykia Oblast… that was not AI. If it was AI then it has got staggeringly good and we might as well all give up
In truth, he came across as more real and with more interesting and varied views than some of our regular, long-standing commenters…
Such Remarkable gullibility
You are one of the commenters i am referring to. He - a bot - was wittier and more interesting than you. Admittedly not hard, but it shows how much AI is improving
The remarkable thing remains how you seem to expect us all to marvel at your foresight whilst we can all see that you’re so fixated on the detail that you have such little ability to pan out to take any sort of wider view.
QED. Another one of your endless boring yet slightly embittered remarks, devoid of humour and purpose, and clumsily written to boot; this stuff could easily be generated by GPT3 let alone GPT5; I am beginning to have suspicions that you are an early AI model
One of those fun little mutual running beefs that PB enjoys. Nigel and Malcolm being another. We probably all have someone on here who is a natural nemesis. Either because what they write or how they write it irritates us irrationally, or because they have the most opposite views to us on various topics (or both).
Thankfully the bellend has disappeared, his rock probably fell on him.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
I've been to 'Boro and Hartlepool, and survived
Used to go out with a girl from Hartlepool when I was at college. Went wrong, but very nearly went right!.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
Somewhat false equivalence between the odious Crosby and @iSam and @MrEd.
Rod Crosby was a virulent antisemite and Holocaust-denier. "Provocative opinions" underplays it somewhat.
My guess having read the final few posts of Truman was that he was becoming so obviously artificial as well as spammy that the mods decided enough was enough. The concern-trolling was ramping up, it was mainly just pasted material from other websites, and it was starting to look very bot-like (real bot - there were certainly stylistic hints this might be the case - or paid human bot).
That's what distinguished DJ41 from the others. Yes some fruity views on a range of things and very clearly Russia-aligned, but an actual human who applied his brain to posts and wrote eloquently.
You genuinely think he was AI?
Surely not. His long ten paragraph description of life and poverty in provincial Russia sounded like a real human to me, 100%, and also like someone with genuine and deep experience of Russia, The way he joked about Kalmykia Oblast… that was not AI. If it was AI then it has got staggeringly good and we might as well all give up
In truth, he came across as more real and with more interesting and varied views than some of our regular, long-standing commenters…
Such Remarkable gullibility
You are one of the commenters i am referring to. He - a bot - was wittier and more interesting than you. Admittedly not hard, but it shows how much AI is improving
The remarkable thing remains how you seem to expect us all to marvel at your foresight whilst we can all see that you’re so fixated on the detail that you have such little ability to pan out to take any sort of wider view.
QED. Another one of your endless boring yet slightly embittered remarks, devoid of humour and purpose, and clumsily written to boot; this stuff could easily be generated by GPT3 let alone GPT5; I am beginning to have suspicions that you are an early AI model
One of those fun little mutual running beefs that PB enjoys. Nigel and Malcolm being another. We probably all have someone on here who is a natural nemesis. Either because what they write or how they write it irritates us irrationally, or because they have the most opposite views to us on various topics (or both).
Malc and I long ago reached a position of mutual respect. Won't hear a word against him.
Oh, you mean the other one.
Same feeling I get when people remember with warmth the spiky contributions of "Tim"
ChatGPT insists my plant is a royal palm. When I question it and point out the massive anomalies, it insists that’s just cause I’ve got a “juvenile” example
Interestingly crap
Meanwhile Google lens silently nails it. This is surely an example of the Traveller’s Palm, from Madagascar
Chihuahua killed and woman injured in attack by two XL bully-type dogs in Glasgow
Police Scotland said it received a report of the dogs attacking a 25-year-old woman and her pet chihuahua in Finnart Street on Monday afternoon. Officers are now trying to trace the owner of the two canines.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
Somewhat false equivalence between the odious Crosby and @iSam and @MrEd.
Rod Crosby was a virulent antisemite and Holocaust-denier. "Provocative opinions" underplays it somewhat.
My guess having read the final few posts of Truman was that he was becoming so obviously artificial as well as spammy that the mods decided enough was enough. The concern-trolling was ramping up, it was mainly just pasted material from other websites, and it was starting to look very bot-like (real bot - there were certainly stylistic hints this might be the case - or paid human bot).
That's what distinguished DJ41 from the others. Yes some fruity views on a range of things and very clearly Russia-aligned, but an actual human who applied his brain to posts and wrote eloquently.
You genuinely think he was AI?
Surely not. His long ten paragraph description of life and poverty in provincial Russia sounded like a real human to me, 100%, and also like someone with genuine and deep experience of Russia, The way he joked about Kalmykia Oblast… that was not AI. If it was AI then it has got staggeringly good and we might as well all give up
In truth, he came across as more real and with more interesting and varied views than some of our regular, long-standing commenters…
I missed the one about poverty in rural Russia, which is annoying because I assume it was in response to my comment!
Made you want to emigrate to Russia, a real land of milk and honey
Planning is way down the list of reasons to blame.
Taxes on property ownership are way too low, if you care to look around the rest of the world. With years of low interest rates, the return on other investments has been so low that UK property has turned into an investment rather than simply a place to live, such that the older age group now owns a significant slice of the property being occupied by younger age groups. The UK is wide open to foreign criminalsinvestors buying up prime property, often then left empty, in a way that almost all other countries simply aren’t. And property developers land bank permissions and deliberately develop at a slow rate lower than demand, to maximise their profits on new build developments. Meanwhile there are hundreds of thousands of unfulfilled planning permissions for new housing.
Sort out the anomalous financial climate around housing, and 75% of the problem would be solved. But our inadequate politicians would rather pretend that removing planning controls will somehow magic away all the other problems that they themselves have created.
Planning is top of the list.
Supply and demand determines prices. Planning restrictions cut supply.
Investors only make money due to our planning system. Abolish that, construction would boom (from small scale developers who don't currently get permission) and investors would lose money.
Anyone who loses money from a bad investment deserves as much sympathy as investors in Blockbuster, Woolworths, Wilkinsons and C&A.
Building regulations also have the same effect. It's no use relaxing planning if people can't build cheaply enough. Abolish building controls and let a thousand shanty towns bloom.
@BartholomewRoberts idea on this is the best. Set out the codes and let developers develop.
I think there does need to be some relaxation of building codes.
For example, do we really need sprinkler systems in small apartment complexes?
I'm going to have to say something I should do more often: I don't have enough knowledge to answer that question.
I feel slightly grimy. I have not fulfilled my function and am now questioning my existence.
Chihuahua killed and woman injured in attack by two XL bully-type dogs in Glasgow
Police Scotland said it received a report of the dogs attacking a 25-year-old woman and her pet chihuahua in Finnart Street on Monday afternoon. Officers are now trying to trace the owner of the two canines.
It seems like there is a lull in both polling and politics at the moment.
I enjoyed Reeves' Mais Lecture by the way (I am a researcher at Bayes btw, so it is a must to watch). I thought her overall strategy towards the economy was compelling. I sorely hope Labour get a shot.
Sadly this is a country of vested interests and the largest of these is property ownership. The haves are simply not interested in helping the have nots if the cost is the scarcity premium attached to their own assets. This is not a party political failure, it is a societal one.
The dominant ideology of our times is that greed is good and to beggar thy neighbour.
If the present situation was not the intended result, then those pushing that ideology for many decades might perhaps think about pushing a less anti-social set of values.
I am a 52 yr old local government employee of 27 years standing on just above current average UK income. Realistically I cannot afford a mortgage as with current rates and day to day living costs factored in it is untenable if I want to have a semblance of a decent life; IE the ability to afford to eat decent, healthy food, socialise once weekly and have one (UK) week long holiday annually. I do not have family to sub me the savings I don't have to start off on the road to home ownership and won't be leaving a property to anyone once I kick the bucket. I therefore on balance, rent instead. Monthly rent £1180 + bills. Not cheap.
I prefer also to have a (bit) better quality of life than I would slogging my guts out trying to afford home ownership, of what are, in general terms of modern UK new builds, small and poor quality homes
Serious rent there, be tough paying that when you are on the pension, you should move to God's country and you could afford a cracking property on that amount.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
I've been to 'Boro and Hartlepool, and survived
Used to go out with a girl from Hartlepool when I was at college. Went wrong, but very nearly went right!.
Ah one of those Roads Not Travelled. They are infinite. But if the Multiverse Theory is right they ARE travelled. You married that girl.
Notably Con + Reform is 8 points below Labour, even if their combined position vs LLG has improved by a couple of points.
This does rather put paid to the stereotype of the Red Wall as full of Alf Garnets though. 40% inclined to right wing parties, and only 16% (higher than nationally but not much) actually buying any of the Reform party schtick.
I can think of several reasons why the Alf Garnets are no more likely to go Tory than Labour. If we're assuming they are ex Tory voters logic would tell you that abstaining is at least as likely as another vote for the Tories
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
Somewhat false equivalence between the odious Crosby and @iSam and @MrEd.
Rod Crosby was a virulent antisemite and Holocaust-denier. "Provocative opinions" underplays it somewhat.
My guess having read the final few posts of Truman was that he was becoming so obviously artificial as well as spammy that the mods decided enough was enough. The concern-trolling was ramping up, it was mainly just pasted material from other websites, and it was starting to look very bot-like (real bot - there were certainly stylistic hints this might be the case - or paid human bot).
That's what distinguished DJ41 from the others. Yes some fruity views on a range of things and very clearly Russia-aligned, but an actual human who applied his brain to posts and wrote eloquently.
You genuinely think he was AI?
Surely not. His long ten paragraph description of life and poverty in provincial Russia sounded like a real human to me, 100%, and also like someone with genuine and deep experience of Russia, The way he joked about Kalmykia Oblast… that was not AI. If it was AI then it has got staggeringly good and we might as well all give up
In truth, he came across as more real and with more interesting and varied views than some of our regular, long-standing commenters…
Such Remarkable gullibility
You are one of the commenters i am referring to. He - a bot - was wittier and more interesting than you. Admittedly not hard, but it shows how much AI is improving
The remarkable thing remains how you seem to expect us all to marvel at your foresight whilst we can all see that you’re so fixated on the detail that you have such little ability to pan out to take any sort of wider view.
QED. Another one of your endless boring yet slightly embittered remarks, devoid of humour and purpose, and clumsily written to boot; this stuff could easily be generated by GPT3 let alone GPT5; I am beginning to have suspicions that you are an early AI model
One of those fun little mutual running beefs that PB enjoys. Nigel and Malcolm being another. We probably all have someone on here who is a natural nemesis. Either because what they write or how they write it irritates us irrationally, or because they have the most opposite views to us on various topics (or both).
Malc and I long ago reached a position of mutual respect. Won't hear a word against him.
Oh, you mean the other one.
Same feeling I get when people remember with warmth the spiky contributions of "Tim"
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
I've been to 'Boro and Hartlepool, and survived
Used to go out with a girl from Hartlepool when I was at college. Went wrong, but very nearly went right!.
Ah one of those Roads Not Travelled. They are infinite. But if the Multiverse Theory is right they ARE travelled. You married that girl.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
I’m looking at a 2009 house to move to which was built by a top two builder in the area (according to my surveyor). It’s real last gasp of the pre-crash bubble stuff. Siemens appliances, German fixings, huge rooms and an integrated garage. Most importantly a completely clean home report. It’s a townhouse so apparently no one wants it? If I can figure out what the bloody hell the roof is made of we’ll offer on it and it looks like a very solid deal.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
I've been to 'Boro and Hartlepool, and survived
Used to go out with a girl from Hartlepool when I was at college. Went wrong, but very nearly went right!.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
More than one reason why so. Housebuilders are not charities. market price matters. Like all other firms they plan to maximise the bottom line. The housing/land market is tightly and non-rationally regulated. The best approach is to ensure a consistent reasonably predictable flow of work. Landbanks are used to plan ahead as well as regulate price. You don't want to have to find X thousand brickies that don't exist from thin air next week, and then lay them off the following month.
O/T A new poll (Economist) has just come out showing Biden ahead of Trump (44/43).
That is the fifth poll in a row where Biden is in the lead (or a tie in one case). The moving average is now tied 45/45.
There seems to be a clear movement to Biden.
Drip drip drip as Trump's unelectability dawns on the critical mass of non-partisan voters who will decide the election. That's my confident prediction. It's just a matter of whether to have him with jam or marmalade.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
The housebuilders are acting like OPEC, and restrict supply to support prices. There are two alternative approaches for dealing with this.
1. Bart's approach of abolishing all planning restrictions so that there's no shortage of land to be built on, and any builder who sits on undeveloped land will face another builder taking the sale by building first.
Negative consequences/criticisms - unplanned building will make it harder to provide services to new housing. Urban sprawl will become a blight on the countryside. It might not even work, as the demand for housing is concentrated in particular hotspots, developers might still be able to control the market in particular areas.
2. Allow local councils to build houses again, so that a steady supply of council housing stops developers from distorting the market, and also acts as a quality standard for private housing to compete against.
Negative consequences/criticisms - wherever would cash-starved councils find the money to become housebuilders? They might be rubbish at it.
I favour option 2 and would fund it from central government (luckily I don't need to get elected, eh?). But I think the housing problem is big and bad enough that we should probably do multiple things to try to attack it rather than just one.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
The housebuilders are acting like OPEC, and restrict supply to support prices. There are two alternative approaches for dealing with this.
1. Bart's approach of abolishing all planning restrictions so that there's no shortage of land to be built on, and any builder who sits on undeveloped land will face another builder taking the sale by building first.
Negative consequences/criticisms - unplanned building will make it harder to provide services to new housing. Urban sprawl will become a blight on the countryside. It might not even work, as the demand for housing is concentrated in particular hotspots, developers might still be able to control the market in particular areas.
2. Allow local councils to build houses again, so that a steady supply of council housing stops developers from distorting the market, and also acts as a quality standard for private housing to compete against.
Negative consequences/criticisms - wherever would cash-starved councils find the money to become housebuilders? They might be rubbish at it.
I favour option 2 and would fund it from central government (luckily I don't need to get elected, eh?). But I think the housing problem is big and bad enough that we should probably do multiple things to try to attack it rather than just one.
Anyone who has ever used “local character” as a reason to object to a planning application should be barred from objecting ever again. That would crimp a good 70% of bad faith NIMBYism.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
I've been to 'Boro and Hartlepool, and survived
Used to go out with a girl from Hartlepool when I was at college. Went wrong, but very nearly went right!.
You certainly dodged a bullet there!
I sometimes wonder about that, but I’m very happy with Mrs C, who comes from another town sometimes criticised on here. Who knows!
Sadly this is a country of vested interests and the largest of these is property ownership. The haves are simply not interested in helping the have nots if the cost is the scarcity premium attached to their own assets. This is not a party political failure, it is a societal one.
The dominant ideology of our times is that greed is good and to beggar thy neighbour.
If the present situation was not the intended result, then those pushing that ideology for many decades might perhaps think about pushing a less anti-social set of values.
I am a 52 yr old local government employee of 27 years standing on just above current average UK income. Realistically I cannot afford a mortgage as with current rates and day to day living costs factored in it is untenable if I want to have a semblance of a decent life; IE the ability to afford to eat decent, healthy food, socialise once weekly and have one (UK) week long holiday annually. I do not have family to sub me the savings I don't have to start off on the road to home ownership and won't be leaving a property to anyone once I kick the bucket. I therefore on balance, rent instead. Monthly rent £1180 + bills. Not cheap.
I prefer also to have a (bit) better quality of life than I would slogging my guts out trying to afford home ownership, of what are, in general terms of modern UK new builds, small and poor quality homes
Serious rent there, be tough paying that when you are on the pension, you should move to God's country and you could afford a cracking property on that amount.
That is cheap for London, and I'm on the south west outskirts and am fortunate to have a kindly landlord who knows it's difficult and genuinely tries to keep it down. Average 1 bedroom flat rent is £1500 per month these days.
Certainly the failure to build enough new homes has cost the Tories the support of younger voters, even Cameron pre Brexit in 2015 lost most under 35s to Ed Miliband's Labour as most of them rent. One of the reasons Poilievre is likely to lead the Canadian Conservatives from opposition back to power next year is his push for more new homes, especially to be built near stations. As a result the Canadian Conservatives are now doing relatively much better with younger voters and almost as well as they do with pensioners.
Blair's failure to impose transition controls on migrants from the new accession nations in 2004 and massively increased immigration overall since 1997 has also increased demand for housing, further adding to price rises combined with lack of supply. The biggest Nimbys of course are often the LDs, certainly at local level in alliance with Greens and Independents. If Starmer is to see more new homes as he wants he will have to defy Nimbyism, especially in the South outside London and London suburbs, even more so if he tries to expand building on the greenbelt
British deputy PM visits SM Entertainment https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=371061 British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, who is visiting Seoul for the Summit for Democracy, paid a surprise visit to the office of K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment, Tuesday. Dowden, accompanied by a delegation of British officials including British Ambassador to Korea Colin Crooks, British Council in Korea Director Paul Clementson and special adviser Edward de Minckwitz, visited the headquarters of SM Entertainment in eastern Seoul's Seongdong District, and met with SM's CEO Jang Cheol-hyuk and Chief Global Officer Choi Jung-min.
Known for his longstanding passion for culture and entertainment and his children's avid love of K-pop, the deputy prime minister requested a visit to the leading K-pop company through the British Council in Korea, according to a statement released by SM Entertainment, Wednesday.
SM, a titan in the K-pop industry with chart-topping acts including Super Junior, EXO, Red Velvet, NCT, aespa and most recently RIIZE, welcomed the British delegation, showcasing the breadth of its global influence...
I found that Guardian article a bit sus. I suspect there was some very selective use of statistics in there. I struggle to see how a larger share of landlords vs owner occupiers has a material effect on house prices in the long run, unless landlords are keeping the properties empty (but why would they do that?). House prices reflect three factors predominantly: supply vs demand, interest rates, and inflation (since the first two are real factors determining real house prices). Not many people seem to be aware that in real terms house prices are at the same level they were 20 years ago. Over that period, owner occupancy has fallen by about 6pp but house prices have moved sideways. Landlords may be bastards and owner occupancy may be a good thing, but it's a separate discussion to the one about the level of house prices IMHO.
Accurate for once (modern grenades have a dead man’s handle that only starts the fuse when released), although that MP better keep it held or things might get messy.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
Sadly this is a country of vested interests and the largest of these is property ownership. The haves are simply not interested in helping the have nots if the cost is the scarcity premium attached to their own assets. This is not a party political failure, it is a societal one.
The dominant ideology of our times is that greed is good and to beggar thy neighbour.
If the present situation was not the intended result, then those pushing that ideology for many decades might perhaps think about pushing a less anti-social set of values.
I am a 52 yr old local government employee of 27 years standing on just above current average UK income. Realistically I cannot afford a mortgage as with current rates and day to day living costs factored in it is untenable if I want to have a semblance of a decent life; IE the ability to afford to eat decent, healthy food, socialise once weekly and have one (UK) week long holiday annually. I do not have family to sub me the savings I don't have to start off on the road to home ownership and won't be leaving a property to anyone once I kick the bucket. I therefore on balance, rent instead. Monthly rent £1180 + bills. Not cheap.
I prefer also to have a (bit) better quality of life than I would slogging my guts out trying to afford home ownership, of what are, in general terms of modern UK new builds, small and poor quality homes
Serious rent there, be tough paying that when you are on the pension, you should move to God's country and you could afford a cracking property on that amount.
That is cheap for London, and I'm on the south west outskirts and am fortunate to have a kindly landlord who knows it's difficult and genuinely tries to keep it down. Average 1 bedroom flat rent is £1500 per month these days.
There needs to be a drive to build large amounts of genuinely affordable housing and more social housing. Some would scoff at the idea of building social housing. I work with social housing and know 1st hand the genuine problems those poor and on low incomes have trying to find a roof to go over their heads.
Chihuahua killed and woman injured in attack by two XL bully-type dogs in Glasgow
Police Scotland said it received a report of the dogs attacking a 25-year-old woman and her pet chihuahua in Finnart Street on Monday afternoon. Officers are now trying to trace the owner of the two canines.
O/T A new poll (Economist) has just come out showing Biden ahead of Trump (44/43).
That is the fifth poll in a row where Biden is in the lead (or a tie in one case). The moving average is now tied 45/45.
There seems to be a clear movement to Biden.
Not a great deal for Biden to crow about though, 44% or 45% would be the lowest voteshare for a re elected President in US history. It would also be the lowest voteshare for a Democratic nominee for President since the 43% Clinton got in 1992 (when Perot got 19% in a 3 way race) and match the 45% Dukakis got in 1988 when Bush 41 beat him by a landslide.
If Haley had been GOP nominee rather than Trump she would surely now be polling over 50% and heading for the White House?
Sadly this is a country of vested interests and the largest of these is property ownership. The haves are simply not interested in helping the have nots if the cost is the scarcity premium attached to their own assets. This is not a party political failure, it is a societal one.
Damn, I hate it when we are the ones to blame, I'd much prefer to blame a politician.
Chihuahua killed and woman injured in attack by two XL bully-type dogs in Glasgow
Police Scotland said it received a report of the dogs attacking a 25-year-old woman and her pet chihuahua in Finnart Street on Monday afternoon. Officers are now trying to trace the owner of the two canines.
Chihuahua killed and woman injured in attack by two XL bully-type dogs in Glasgow
Police Scotland said it received a report of the dogs attacking a 25-year-old woman and her pet chihuahua in Finnart Street on Monday afternoon. Officers are now trying to trace the owner of the two canines.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
Somewhat false equivalence between the odious Crosby and @iSam and @MrEd.
Rod Crosby was a virulent antisemite and Holocaust-denier. "Provocative opinions" underplays it somewhat.
My guess having read the final few posts of Truman was that he was becoming so obviously artificial as well as spammy that the mods decided enough was enough. The concern-trolling was ramping up, it was mainly just pasted material from other websites, and it was starting to look very bot-like (real bot - there were certainly stylistic hints this might be the case - or paid human bot).
That's what distinguished DJ41 from the others. Yes some fruity views on a range of things and very clearly Russia-aligned, but an actual human who applied his brain to posts and wrote eloquently.
You genuinely think he was AI?
Surely not. His long ten paragraph description of life and poverty in provincial Russia sounded like a real human to me, 100%, and also like someone with genuine and deep experience of Russia, The way he joked about Kalmykia Oblast… that was not AI. If it was AI then it has got staggeringly good and we might as well all give up
In truth, he came across as more real and with more interesting and varied views than some of our regular, long-standing commenters…
Such Remarkable gullibility
You are one of the commenters i am referring to. He - a bot - was wittier and more interesting than you. Admittedly not hard, but it shows how much AI is improving
The remarkable thing remains how you seem to expect us all to marvel at your foresight whilst we can all see that you’re so fixated on the detail that you have such little ability to pan out to take any sort of wider view.
QED. Another one of your endless boring yet slightly embittered remarks, devoid of humour and purpose, and clumsily written to boot; this stuff could easily be generated by GPT3 let alone GPT5; I am beginning to have suspicions that you are an early AI model
One of those fun little mutual running beefs that PB enjoys. Nigel and Malcolm being another. We probably all have someone on here who is a natural nemesis. Either because what they write or how they write it irritates us irrationally, or because they have the most opposite views to us on various topics (or both).
Nigel(F) loves a feud. He's had dozens. I recall a frenzied spat between him and (RIP) Ishmael, who also liked a feud, whereby over a period of days the pair of them strained for ever more outlandish ways to denigrate the size of the other's penis. All civility was dropped as these two men reverted to their raw essence. It was pure lord of the (open) flies.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
The chances of a General Election on May 2nd are below 50% now, in my opinion. 🫠
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
Somewhat false equivalence between the odious Crosby and @iSam and @MrEd.
Rod Crosby was a virulent antisemite and Holocaust-denier. "Provocative opinions" underplays it somewhat.
My guess having read the final few posts of Truman was that he was becoming so obviously artificial as well as spammy that the mods decided enough was enough. The concern-trolling was ramping up, it was mainly just pasted material from other websites, and it was starting to look very bot-like (real bot - there were certainly stylistic hints this might be the case - or paid human bot).
That's what distinguished DJ41 from the others. Yes some fruity views on a range of things and very clearly Russia-aligned, but an actual human who applied his brain to posts and wrote eloquently.
You genuinely think he was AI?
Surely not. His long ten paragraph description of life and poverty in provincial Russia sounded like a real human to me, 100%, and also like someone with genuine and deep experience of Russia, The way he joked about Kalmykia Oblast… that was not AI. If it was AI then it has got staggeringly good and we might as well all give up
In truth, he came across as more real and with more interesting and varied views than some of our regular, long-standing commenters…
Such Remarkable gullibility
You are one of the commenters i am referring to. He - a bot - was wittier and more interesting than you. Admittedly not hard, but it shows how much AI is improving
The remarkable thing remains how you seem to expect us all to marvel at your foresight whilst we can all see that you’re so fixated on the detail that you have such little ability to pan out to take any sort of wider view.
QED. Another one of your endless boring yet slightly embittered remarks, devoid of humour and purpose, and clumsily written to boot; this stuff could easily be generated by GPT3 let alone GPT5; I am beginning to have suspicions that you are an early AI model
One of those fun little mutual running beefs that PB enjoys. Nigel and Malcolm being another. We probably all have someone on here who is a natural nemesis. Either because what they write or how they write it irritates us irrationally, or because they have the most opposite views to us on various topics (or both).
Malc and I long ago reached a position of mutual respect. Won't hear a word against him.
Oh, you mean the other one.
Same feeling I get when people remember with warmth the spiky contributions of "Tim"
There have been other "Tims" also remembered with warmth - e.g. the Americans, @MTimT and @Tim_B
Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osborne share most of the blame for deliberately inflating demand (both physical and financial) for housing assets with loose monetary policy and mass immigration.
Should have voted for Ed Milliband in 2015, who worked out ever rising property values is counter aspirational, and was widely derided for it.
Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osborne share most of the blame for deliberately inflating demand (both physical and financial) for housing assets with loose monetary policy and mass immigration.
Should have voted for Ed Milliband in 2015, who worked out ever rising property values is counter aspirational, and was widely derided for it.
Who knows, maybe Starmer and Rayner will somehow contrive to lose their seats despite winning a landslide - attacks from aggrieved Corbynites no doubt - and Labour will need to turn to Ed M to be PM, as the most experienced figure on the front bench.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
No but according to the Census it's population has grown, just like practically every other town or city in the country.
So more houses are needed. It's not been undergoing population decline.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
I've been to 'Boro and Hartlepool, and survived
Used to go out with a girl from Hartlepool when I was at college. Went wrong, but very nearly went right!.
Ah one of those Roads Not Travelled. They are infinite. But if the Multiverse Theory is right they ARE travelled. You married that girl.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
The chances of a General Election on May 2nd are below 50% now, in my opinion. 🫠
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
You are right. A more precise figure is, and always has been, approximately Zero%.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
Labour should institute the 'Ministry of public works'. Get a little competition back in the market.
It’s perfectly simple. Don’t grant local monopolies. If one or two of the giants are doing all the developments in a district, then they can play games like this.
Speaking of photos here’s one. Do we have any horticulturalists on the site? Or er palm/cactusologists?
THIS is just growing, fervently, in my hotel garden, amongst the green iguanas and the Andean squirrels
What is it? All I know is that it is quite magnificent
I’m gonna see if an AI app can identify it. An interesting use-case
A yucca?
A Traveller’s Palm it seems. Not a true palm tree but very distinctive. It grows in one plane making it kind of 2D
There are 2 examples here in my hotel garden
That Advocaat extinguisher looks nasty.
I’m staying at entirely the wrong hotel. It has no pool and no aircon, and it is “feels like” 44C here in Palomino. Excruciatingly hot (hence the chilled white wine as coolant and anaesthetic)
I got carried away by the 9.3 rating on booking.com next to a reasonable price - usually a great sign. However I now realise that rating is given by all the eager young people who come here to do Buddhist chanting and endless daily yoga sessions. I’m in a kind of Woke Colombian Ashram
The girls are pretty, tanned and lithe, but oddly unsexy. All that Woke yoga. The men are hermaphrodites with good teeth
They speak Globish, fractured basic English “ok guys now breakfast”
I like the squirrels and the iguanas. I shall move on tomorrow
The chances of a General Election on May 2nd are below 50% now, in my opinion. 🫠
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
You are right. A more precise figure is, and always has been, approximately Zero%.
What makes you sure it’s always been approximately zero? Where’s your evidence?
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
Each and every one of those houses was built to a telephone directory sized paper pile. Which was all signed off.
Since the paperwork is fine, it’s reality that’s wrong.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
Why should housebuilders, any more than candlestick makers, be required to fund schools and bits of the NHS? This is a tax payer liability; housebuilders provide a service, the growing population they serve is a direct result of government migration policy, and the consequences are a state liability.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
More than one reason why so. Housebuilders are not charities. market price matters. Like all other firms they plan to maximise the bottom line. The housing/land market is tightly and non-rationally regulated. The best approach is to ensure a consistent reasonably predictable flow of work. Landbanks are used to plan ahead as well as regulate price. You don't want to have to find X thousand brickies that don't exist from thin air next week, and then lay them off the following month.
Landbanks have been increasing every year for more than a decade. Their main use is to force local gvernment to release more land by ensuring they don't meet their housing targets.
And yes, finding brickies (and carpenters and plasterers and plumbers and roofers) and then laying them off the next week is EXACTLY what builders do.
The chances of a General Election on May 2nd are below 50% now, in my opinion. 🫠
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
You are right. A more precise figure is, and always has been, approximately Zero%.
What makes you sure it’s always been approximately zero? Where’s your evidence?
The polls and past experience.
No PM will call an election when they are 20% behind the polls unless they run out of time.
All the other signs have made it clear May was a non starter as the Tories weren't buying billboard spaces and ads commensurate with a May general election.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
Why should new houses pay for services? That should be abolished!
Everyone should pay for services, young and old, not just young people that need a home while others sit back and contribute diddly squat.
Available land with planning permission is irrelevant when other land doesn't have planning permission and can't compete.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
I've always assumed developers are too smart to flood the market with new-builds and drive the price below the cost of construction.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
It has been like that for years. Using Stockton-on-Tees as an example, the borough has both seen tens of thousands of new homes built over 10 years AND been told by the government that not enough homes are being built.
If the council isn't building enough then the law allows developers to override everyone and build what they want where they want. So get permission, don't build the council-imposed mix of affordable housing, then get permission to build what you want for big profits!
Because tens of thousands is farcically nowhere near enough.
We need millions.
In Stockton On Tees. You ever been there 😂😂
No but according to the Census it's population has grown, just like practically every other town or city in the country.
So more houses are needed. It's not been undergoing population decline.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
Why should housebuilders, any more than candlestick makers, be required to fund schools and bits of the NHS? This is a tax payer liability; housebuilders provide a service, the growing population they serve is a direct result of government migration policy, and the consequences are a state liability.
The chances of a General Election on May 2nd are below 50% now, in my opinion. 🫠
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
You are right. A more precise figure is, and always has been, approximately Zero%.
What makes you sure it’s always been approximately zero? Where’s your evidence?
Asquith's evidence: Wait and see. Apart from that my evidence base is non-existent. The same can be said, with truth, about my equally wild, evidence free and baseless prediction of late September.
Fieldwork: 15th to 18th March 2024 · Sample: 2,072 adults in Great Britain
If there were a second referendum on British membership of the European Union, how would you vote?
Re-join: 54% (+3) Stay out: 39% (-4)
(Changes from 8th to 11th March 2024)
That’s a striking shift
I don’t like it but I won’t deny it. I wonder if Starmer will be tempted. Let’s say he gets a 150 seat majority and the polls are showing 65/35 Rejoin - a sure fire win
He’s an ardent Remoaner. He will have Remoaner friends saying “We will never get this chance again, a massive majority and the polls totally in favour. Do it NOW”
Speaking of photos here’s one. Do we have any horticulturalists on the site? Or er palm/cactusologists?
THIS is just growing, fervently, in my hotel garden, amongst the green iguanas and the Andean squirrels
What is it? All I know is that it is quite magnificent
I’m gonna see if an AI app can identify it. An interesting use-case
A yucca?
A Traveller’s Palm it seems. Not a true palm tree but very distinctive. It grows in one plane making it kind of 2D
There are 2 examples here in my hotel garden
That Advocaat extinguisher looks nasty.
I’m staying at entirely the wrong hotel. It has no pool and no aircon, and it is “feels like” 44C here in Palomino. Excruciatingly hot (hence the chilled white wine as coolant and anaesthetic)
I got carried away by the 9.3 rating on booking.com next to a reasonable price - usually a great sign. However I now realise that rating is given by all the eager young people who come here to do Buddhist chanting and endless daily yoga sessions. I’m in a kind of Woke Colombian Ashram
The girls are pretty, tanned and lithe, but oddly unsexy. All that Woke yoga. The men are hermaphrodites with good teeth
They speak Globish, fractured basic English “ok guys now breakfast”
I like the squirrels and the iguanas. I shall move on tomorrow
“Woke yoga”
This suggests the existence of unWoke Yoga.
Hmmm
Viking Yoga perhaps - “there is no fucking about when we say Corpse Pose”
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
Why should housebuilders, any more than candlestick makers, be required to fund schools and bits of the NHS? This is a tax payer liability; housebuilders provide a service, the growing population they serve is a direct result of government migration policy, and the consequences are a state liability.
Because ever since Thatcher we have worked on the principle of 'polluter pays'. Local councils cannot control how many houses are built in their area - this is assigned from central government. But central Government is not willing to pay for all the costs of the services associated with all the new building. So if they will not pay and the local councils cannot pay then it is down to the company actually making the profit to pay.
Fieldwork: 15th to 18th March 2024 · Sample: 2,072 adults in Great Britain
If there were a second referendum on British membership of the European Union, how would you vote?
Re-join: 54% (+3) Stay out: 39% (-4)
(Changes from 8th to 11th March 2024)
But how would the polls look if a condition of rejoining was that every British firstborn was exiled to Brussels to work day and night in their mayonnaise mines?
Fieldwork: 15th to 18th March 2024 · Sample: 2,072 adults in Great Britain
If there were a second referendum on British membership of the European Union, how would you vote?
Re-join: 54% (+3) Stay out: 39% (-4)
(Changes from 8th to 11th March 2024)
That’s a striking shift
I don’t like it but I won’t deny it. I wonder if Starmer will be tempted. Let’s say he gets a 150 seat majority and the polls are showing 65/35 Rejoin - a sure fire win
He’s an ardent Remoaner. He will have Remoaner friends saying “We will never get this chance again, a massive majority and the polls totally in favour. Do it NOW”
It would destroy his Premiership in one go. He has far more importnat things to worry about than reopening that can of worms.
If he has any sense then he will move towards EFTA membership or some equivalent which is where we should have ended up in the first place.
Speaking of photos here’s one. Do we have any horticulturalists on the site? Or er palm/cactusologists?
THIS is just growing, fervently, in my hotel garden, amongst the green iguanas and the Andean squirrels
What is it? All I know is that it is quite magnificent
I’m gonna see if an AI app can identify it. An interesting use-case
A yucca?
A Traveller’s Palm it seems. Not a true palm tree but very distinctive. It grows in one plane making it kind of 2D
There are 2 examples here in my hotel garden
That Advocaat extinguisher looks nasty.
I’m staying at entirely the wrong hotel. It has no pool and no aircon, and it is “feels like” 44C here in Palomino. Excruciatingly hot (hence the chilled white wine as coolant and anaesthetic)
I got carried away by the 9.3 rating on booking.com next to a reasonable price - usually a great sign. However I now realise that rating is given by all the eager young people who come here to do Buddhist chanting and endless daily yoga sessions. I’m in a kind of Woke Colombian Ashram
The girls are pretty, tanned and lithe, but oddly unsexy. All that Woke yoga. The men are hermaphrodites with good teeth
They speak Globish, fractured basic English “ok guys now breakfast”
I like the squirrels and the iguanas. I shall move on tomorrow
“Woke yoga”
This suggests the existence of unWoke Yoga.
Hmmm
Viking Yoga perhaps - “there is no fucking about when we say Corpse Pose”
Russian Window Yoga….
No, there really is unwoke yoga
My young and lovely ex wife, with her weird mix of UKIP-Buddhist TERFy anti-communism, kept trying to sell it to me, as she hates The Wokeness
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
I've always assumed developers are too smart to flood the market with new-builds and drive the price below the cost of construction.
Speaking of photos here’s one. Do we have any horticulturalists on the site? Or er palm/cactusologists?
THIS is just growing, fervently, in my hotel garden, amongst the green iguanas and the Andean squirrels
What is it? All I know is that it is quite magnificent
I’m gonna see if an AI app can identify it. An interesting use-case
A yucca?
A Traveller’s Palm it seems. Not a true palm tree but very distinctive. It grows in one plane making it kind of 2D
There are 2 examples here in my hotel garden
That Advocaat extinguisher looks nasty.
I’m staying at entirely the wrong hotel. It has no pool and no aircon, and it is “feels like” 44C here in Palomino. Excruciatingly hot (hence the chilled white wine as coolant and anaesthetic)
I got carried away by the 9.3 rating on booking.com next to a reasonable price - usually a great sign. However I now realise that rating is given by all the eager young people who come here to do Buddhist chanting and endless daily yoga sessions. I’m in a kind of Woke Colombian Ashram
The girls are pretty, tanned and lithe, but oddly unsexy. All that Woke yoga. The men are hermaphrodites with good teeth
They speak Globish, fractured basic English “ok guys now breakfast”
I like the squirrels and the iguanas. I shall move on tomorrow
“Woke yoga”
This suggests the existence of unWoke Yoga.
Hmmm
Viking Yoga perhaps - “there is no fucking about when we say Corpse Pose”
Russian Window Yoga….
There is of course Fight Club Yoga it’s just that nobody really knows about it because you do not talk about Fight Club Yoga.
Speaking of photos here’s one. Do we have any horticulturalists on the site? Or er palm/cactusologists?
THIS is just growing, fervently, in my hotel garden, amongst the green iguanas and the Andean squirrels
What is it? All I know is that it is quite magnificent
I’m gonna see if an AI app can identify it. An interesting use-case
A yucca?
A Traveller’s Palm it seems. Not a true palm tree but very distinctive. It grows in one plane making it kind of 2D
There are 2 examples here in my hotel garden
That Advocaat extinguisher looks nasty.
I’m staying at entirely the wrong hotel. It has no pool and no aircon, and it is “feels like” 44C here in Palomino. Excruciatingly hot (hence the chilled white wine as coolant and anaesthetic)
I got carried away by the 9.3 rating on booking.com next to a reasonable price - usually a great sign. However I now realise that rating is given by all the eager young people who come here to do Buddhist chanting and endless daily yoga sessions. I’m in a kind of Woke Colombian Ashram
The girls are pretty, tanned and lithe, but oddly unsexy. All that Woke yoga. The men are hermaphrodites with good teeth
They speak Globish, fractured basic English “ok guys now breakfast”
I like the squirrels and the iguanas. I shall move on tomorrow
I quite like the voyage of discovery that is involved in nearly very nice hotels. Generally its no problem, but it can be odd. Monkeys ransacking the room in Zimbabwe, lots of small lizards lurking everywhere in Laos, a room in Naples that hadn't bothered to be rain proof, and a place in Vietnam where the rattle of cockroaches was quite bad (that one I really objected to, the rest were fine-ish)
I've not been to Colombia other than Bogata airport for a brief stop. I genuinely think that the most beautiful girl ever to exist was a stewardess on that flight though. More amazing even than Salma Hayek. I was struck dumb, obviously. (I can deal with 'quite stunning', but the categories beyond that cause me to trip over my tongue)
And let's not forget our housing crisis isn't just about high prices and declining home ownership. Another big problem is our neglect of the public rental sector. Thatcher.
Agree about the NIMBYS but we also need to deal with one of the biggest obstacles to housebuilding - the building firms.
How can it be acceptable that last year, when prices stopped rising as sharply as they had been, the big developers cut back on their building programmes specificaly citing the platauing of house prices?
Housebuilders are sitting on hundredas of thousands of plots with planning permission and are refusing to build on them.
That, and the regulation of new builds is almost non-existent. If you're lucky you get a structurally sound ludicrously expensive rabbit hutch out of your typical volume housebuilder. If you're unlucky the thing is full of serious faults that they don't want to spend money putting right and, as many horrified buyers have quickly discovered, they don't want to do the work and you can do nothing more than beg to get them to do it. The NHBC certificate is worthless.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a new build under any circumstances. Not good value, not worth the risk.
We bought new build Barrett in 2005 and we got a good one. Garden full of rubble with major drainage issues. Wall cavities not full of insulation as supposed to be. Cracks in wall and ceiling plaster as the building settled.
Then we had a hole open up in the downstairs ceiling right above the front door. Just as it was on sale with people coming for viewings. And - having had conversations with various neighbours - we appear to have got a good one!
Never again.
Standards have clearly deteriorated over time. My flat was built about 20 years ago and, apart from a little bit of plaster cracking and the windows being a little on the cheap side, it's fine.
Nowadays you can barely move for tales of wonky walls and collapsed ceilings. There was even a case in Cambridge recently where the shysters built houses that started falling down before they'd finished building them. Those got torn down, but you bet if they could've disguised the problems with plaster and paint they would've flogged them off.
What's insane is that standards have gotten worse, as costs and regulation have risen.
Many objections to new housing would disappear is they weren’t so horrendously ugly. Vile redbrick warts all over our fair land
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
It would help, but given the types of objection many raise which have nothing to do with appearance and character, and more to do with principle or separate material matters, it wouldn't make that much difference.
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
Except contributions from development notoriously don't address those concerns. One of the big problems with Barts loony plans for getting rid of planning is that part of that planning is making developers make contibutions towards servcies. It is a failing system which needs reform but not abolition. Indeed we need more power to force developers to properly fund services - particularly GPs and schools.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
Why should housebuilders, any more than candlestick makers, be required to fund schools and bits of the NHS? This is a tax payer liability; housebuilders provide a service, the growing population they serve is a direct result of government migration policy, and the consequences are a state liability.
Because ever since Thatcher we have worked on the principle of 'polluter pays'. Local councils cannot control how many houses are built in their area - this is assigned from central government. But central Government is not willing to pay for all the costs of the services associated with all the new building. So if they will not pay and the local councils cannot pay then it is down to the company actually making the profit to pay.
If local taxes on property/land were higher, high enough so councils could "profit" from empty land becoming built-on land, then councils would encourage house-building and have the resources for more local services.
Fieldwork: 15th to 18th March 2024 · Sample: 2,072 adults in Great Britain
If there were a second referendum on British membership of the European Union, how would you vote?
Re-join: 54% (+3) Stay out: 39% (-4)
(Changes from 8th to 11th March 2024)
That’s a striking shift
I don’t like it but I won’t deny it. I wonder if Starmer will be tempted. Let’s say he gets a 150 seat majority and the polls are showing 65/35 Rejoin - a sure fire win
He’s an ardent Remoaner. He will have Remoaner friends saying “We will never get this chance again, a massive majority and the polls totally in favour. Do it NOW”
He's also a lawyer. So he won't ask the question (out loud, anyway) unless/until he is certain what the answer is going to be.
Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osborne share most of the blame for deliberately inflating demand (both physical and financial) for housing assets with loose monetary policy and mass immigration.
They are partly to blame, but it is the Tories under Boris, Truss and Sunak who have let immigration explode to even greater and more absurd levels: 1.4m in two years. Blair could only dream of that (and probably did)
It looks an awful lot like net migration grew dramatically during the last Labour administration and has been falling since.
Sites like Macrotrends are often filled with garbage data, and you should be wary of them.
Ah - thanks for the warning. Internet search really has become worthless.
You're not wrong, as I said in previous posts. I have spent long hours this week trying to find a physical shop that sells sliding wardrobe doors, and similarly for adhesive card holders for phones. Google is becoming useless.
The chances of a General Election on May 2nd are below 50% now, in my opinion. 🫠
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
You are right. A more precise figure is, and always has been, approximately Zero%.
What makes you sure it’s always been approximately zero? Where’s your evidence?
The polls and past experience.
No PM will call an election when they are 20% behind the polls unless they run out of time.
All the other signs have made it clear May was a non starter as the Tories weren't buying billboard spaces and ads commensurate with a May general election.
no PM will call election when 20% behind? They won’t let it time out on December 17th, hold campaign over holidays, it will give them even worse result than they deserve - so they will call and hold an election before Dec 17th, even if 20% behind.
Billboards are so last century - check out how much Conservative Party has spent on social media advertising since December. 😦
They are not 20 points behind anyway, they are only 7 away. It’s only 8% they need to claw back, and that certainly feels very doable in April to me, as I explained just now.
It’s like you are living in the past, giving this bespoke 21st century situation no thought or analysis 🫣
From the FT. It is not just we are not building enough homes. We are not building enough where they are needed. Some places, as Rochdale mentioned with Stockton, are building a fair quantity.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
I could point out many seem to feel my opinions are provocative yet I am still here
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
I don’t think the outcome of the general election is going to be determined by tactical voting. Tories lose, Labour win. More or less tactical voting may effect the majority, but polling doesn’t suggest that tactics voting is critical.
The extent of tactical voting is important only for those of us betting on LibDem seat numbers.
He was fun and interesting. Sure he was provocative and right wing and possibly pro-Putin (tho quite subtle about it) - I can see why his views might have outraged people, but then @148grss views are outrageous to me, but I don’t want him cancelled, quite the opposite
However I expect you have a solid moderators’ reason for cancelling him, and if so fair enuff
I didn't ban him, so I don't know.
I just want reassurance people aren’t being banned for provocative opinions.
You must be new here.
That reassurance doesn't exist. As @RodCrosby , @isam and @MrEd can testify, having provocative opinions is pretty much the only thing that gets you reliably banned. PB operates on pub rules: if it pisses @OGH or his helpers off you get thrown out. If you want to complain that you are being cancelled I understand that the Spectator pays complainants to complain about viscious[1] things on Twitter.
[1] Yes I know it's "vicious". But Rob Liddle is really oily and oozes dribble, so, y'know...
I could point out many seem to feel my opinions are provocative yet I am still here
Provocative but always interesting and that is coming from a LD whom I know you hate.
Comments
M25 Motorway Closed For The First Time And Not The Last - What's The Point?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqmz4TFks8A
Soon backtracked. Same will happen to Labour.
Interestingly crap
Meanwhile Google lens silently nails it. This is surely an example of the Traveller’s Palm, from Madagascar
https://www.junglemusic.net/Ravenala/The_Traveler_Palm.html
Chihuahua killed and woman injured in attack by two XL bully-type dogs in Glasgow
Police Scotland said it received a report of the dogs attacking a 25-year-old woman and her pet chihuahua in Finnart Street on Monday afternoon. Officers are now trying to trace the owner of the two canines.
https://news.sky.com/story/chihuahua-killed-and-woman-injured-in-attack-by-two-xl-bully-type-dogs-in-glasgow-13098708?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/approved-document-b-fire-safety-frequently-asked-questions
Basically, no you don't - unless they are above a certain height, or have inadequate fire separation.
Buildings insurance can be a great deal more expensive in the absence of sprinkler systems, though.
I enjoyed Reeves' Mais Lecture by the way (I am a researcher at Bayes btw, so it is a must to watch). I thought her overall strategy towards the economy was compelling. I sorely hope Labour get a shot.
https://twitter.com/cbarrie/status/1770487644285178240/photo/1
Housebuilders are not charities. market price matters.
Like all other firms they plan to maximise the bottom line.
The housing/land market is tightly and non-rationally regulated.
The best approach is to ensure a consistent reasonably predictable flow of work. Landbanks are used to plan ahead as well as regulate price.
You don't want to have to find X thousand brickies that don't exist from thin air next week, and then lay them off the following month.
Who knows!
How to drive a Mercedes.
Blair's failure to impose transition controls on migrants from the new accession nations in 2004 and massively increased immigration overall since 1997 has also increased demand for housing, further adding to price rises combined with lack of supply. The biggest Nimbys of course are often the LDs, certainly at local level in alliance with Greens and Independents. If Starmer is to see more new homes as he wants he will have to defy Nimbyism, especially in the South outside London and London suburbs, even more so if he tries to expand building on the greenbelt
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1770505398325313824
British deputy PM visits SM Entertainment
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=371061
British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, who is visiting Seoul for the Summit for Democracy, paid a surprise visit to the office of K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment, Tuesday.
Dowden, accompanied by a delegation of British officials including British Ambassador to Korea Colin Crooks, British Council in Korea Director Paul Clementson and special adviser Edward de Minckwitz, visited the headquarters of SM Entertainment in eastern Seoul's Seongdong District, and met with SM's CEO Jang Cheol-hyuk and Chief Global Officer Choi Jung-min.
Known for his longstanding passion for culture and entertainment and his children's avid love of K-pop, the deputy prime minister requested a visit to the leading K-pop company through the British Council in Korea, according to a statement released by SM Entertainment, Wednesday.
SM, a titan in the K-pop industry with chart-topping acts including Super Junior, EXO, Red Velvet, NCT, aespa and most recently RIIZE, welcomed the British delegation, showcasing the breadth of its global influence...
There are 2 examples here in my hotel garden
Build nice Georgian terraces or Victorian semis with proper windows and build them with gentle density - four or five storeys
Make them handsome and make sure there is infrastructure and community - pubs and shops that are walkable - not soulless Barratt bart-burbs based on the car
If Haley had been GOP nominee rather than Trump she would surely now be polling over 50% and heading for the White House?
The infrastructure point would remove many more - some objections are because people genuinely don't know that contributions from the development may well address those concerns - but given that people also object to infrastructure and amenity changes, I wouldn't bet a non-existent house on it.
If polling day were to be May 2, with dissolution on March 26, the general election would have to be announced 21 or 22. Under electoral law, Parliament has to be dissolved – in other words, come to an end – 25 working days before a general election is held. In practice, Parliament would need a few days’ notice of dissolution to allow MPs and peers to decide which – if any – remaining pieces of non-controversial legislation should be approved. It has also become a tradition for the House of Commons to hold a “valedictory debate” just before a dissolution, during which MPs who are standing down from Parliament are given time to make a farewell speech. This means that if the election were to be on May 2, dissolution must take place no later than March 26, Sunak would need to call the election several days before dissolution took place.
What an optimistic economic backdrop to fight an April general election campaign. Looking at how much better todays PMQs was for Rishi, armed with good news of inflation and interest rate falls to come, and still dining out on boat crossings down by a third - all those arguments will be removed from him in an Autumn campaign, where high mortgages high interests rates, rising inflation and energy costs and the record boat crossings are going to be used to flatten him.
If you are not choosing a date based on forecasts for mood music of your campaign, what are you choosing it on 🤷♀️
So more houses are needed. It's not been undergoing population decline.
Bart's issue with planning is he fundementally misunderstands what it is and what it does. He wrongly sees it as the main impediment to building (it isn't) and thinks that by sweeping it away things will magically get better and we will get more houses built (we won't).
The idea that freeing up more land for building will get more houses built is a fallacy. As I have pointed out before available land with planning permission far outstrips the number of houses being built and the gap has widened every year for the last decade or more.
I got carried away by the 9.3 rating on booking.com next to a reasonable price - usually a great sign. However I now realise that rating is given by all the eager young people who come here to do Buddhist chanting and endless daily yoga sessions. I’m in a kind of Woke Colombian Ashram
The girls are pretty, tanned and lithe, but oddly unsexy. All that Woke yoga. The men are hermaphrodites with good teeth
They speak Globish, fractured basic English “ok guys now breakfast”
I like the squirrels and the iguanas. I shall move on tomorrow
Since the paperwork is fine, it’s reality that’s wrong.
If you want to live in an Islamic theocracy go live in Iran or Saudi
And yes, finding brickies (and carpenters and plasterers and plumbers and roofers) and then laying them off the next week is EXACTLY what builders do.
No PM will call an election when they are 20% behind the polls unless they run out of time.
All the other signs have made it clear May was a non starter as the Tories weren't buying billboard spaces and ads commensurate with a May general election.
Everyone should pay for services, young and old, not just young people that need a home while others sit back and contribute diddly squat.
Available land with planning permission is irrelevant when other land doesn't have planning permission and can't compete.
Fieldwork: 15th to 18th March 2024 · Sample: 2,072 adults in Great Britain
If there were a second referendum on British membership of the European Union, how would you vote?
Re-join: 54% (+3)
Stay out: 39% (-4)
(Changes from 8th to 11th March 2024)
100% this.
I don’t like it but I won’t deny it. I wonder if Starmer will be tempted. Let’s say he gets a 150 seat majority and the polls are showing 65/35 Rejoin - a sure fire win
He’s an ardent Remoaner. He will have Remoaner friends saying “We will never get this chance again, a massive majority and the polls totally in favour. Do it NOW”
This suggests the existence of unWoke Yoga.
Hmmm
Viking Yoga perhaps - “there is no fucking about when we say Corpse Pose”
Russian Window Yoga….
If he has any sense then he will move towards EFTA membership or some equivalent which is where we should have ended up in the first place.
My young and lovely ex wife, with her weird mix of UKIP-Buddhist TERFy anti-communism, kept trying to sell it to me, as she hates The Wokeness
I've not been to Colombia other than Bogata airport for a brief stop. I genuinely think that the most beautiful girl ever to exist was a stewardess on that flight though. More amazing even than Salma Hayek. I was struck dumb, obviously. (I can deal with 'quite stunning', but the categories beyond that cause me to trip over my tongue)
If nothing else, he saw what happened to Dave.
Billboards are so last century - check out how much Conservative Party has spent on social media advertising since December. 😦
They are not 20 points behind anyway, they are only 7 away. It’s only 8% they need to claw back, and that certainly feels very doable in April to me, as I explained just now.
It’s like you are living in the past, giving this bespoke 21st century situation no thought or analysis 🫣
https://x.com/sam_dumitriu/status/1746830581428564014?s=61