Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Free movement has now ended and visa restrictions have been tightened, but 2023 immigration and 2022 immigration were both mahoosively larger than what you describe as New Labour's "open door immigration policy".
EU free movement worked at filling labour vacancies flexibly without huge long-term increases in the population.
From non EU nations and the ban on immigrants dependents and £36k salary requirement minimum only for immigrants came in this year.
EU free movement was so unpopular even Starmer has now dropped it
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
What is funny is that argument can only be made by someone who doesn’t perceive the vast and absurd change in the property market since *after* Thatcher was out of power.
When she was in power, it was still the case that prices went up sometimes. Sometimes they went *down*.
Owning property wasn’t a one way bet. If you bought a house and paid off the mortgage, you’d hope to beat inflation on your money.
Owning your home was about personal security in later life. If you own your home outright, you can live on very little.
I bought my first flat in 1998 - 8 years after Thatcher - for the same number of £ it sold for when built in 1988. Property crash.
What we have now is the result of 3 decades of demand exceeding supply.
I would doubt whether Wednesday's debate did as much damage to Starmer as you suspect. I like Rishi, but he came across as arrogant and aggressive. Starmer came across as polite but evasive. I suspect neither came out particularly well. The biggest criticism of Starmer since the debate has been that he allowed Sunak to unfairly bully him.
Anyone who knows somebody with dementia as I do would not class Biden as having it.
There are several forms of dementia. They do not all have the same symptoms. My mother's partner had one of the less common ones and in its early stages it wasn't entirely dissimilar to how Biden is presenting.
Yes
As I’ve said my mother AND her husband are both formally diagnosed with dementia (which is a weird kind of blessing I think, in the circs). So I see it painfully close and it is quite distressing (so I have great sympathy for people close to Biden, unless they are enabling him to stay on - then they are dangerous fools)
My mum’s dementia is nothing like Biden’s. Her symptoms are constant repetition of stories and phrases and forgetting names/identities entirely. She often thinks I am her grandson
But physically if you looked at her (and didn’t listen) you might not even guess she is demented. However her husband is entirely different and with him there are many more physical symptoms - the vague staring, the bewildered face, the odd rictus smile, plus he wanders off for no reason - also his speech is incoherent gibberish quite a lot of the time. He REALLY resembles Biden
A very sad state of affairs. Tho there is seriously promising medicine in the works - for dementia - AIUI. Too late for Biden or my mum tho
Yes, with dementia the symptoms and rates of decline can vary a great deal. Joe Biden might well be in the early stages of a form of it but it's not possible for us to say. We can neither diagnose it nor rule it out. Point is, he looks too frail either to campaign effectively or to serve a 2nd term.
Is there anything there you disagree with?
The frailty thing is inarguable. C4 showed Biden after he’d landed in Atlanta and it was as painful as the clips of Biden’s responses in the debate. He now has that odd tippy-toe shuffling gait of the elderly who are unsteady on their feet, and his helpers in an act of Sunakian genius had him doing a walkabout holding hands with a bunch of fresh faced pre teen kids. The contrast was brutal.
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
The question asked again? Who in the Democrats polls better v Trump in the rustbelt swing states Biden won in 2020. Nobody at present
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
Probably won't matter in terms of people being disenfranchised, it just makes the SNP government look even more bad.
Biden is out to 5.7 on beftair. Anyone else think the market is overreacting?
I don't know. We've never had an obviously senile President running for a second term. We have Grandpa Simpson vs a billionaire rapist with a combover. You tell me how to price this.
On the first part, I presume you're joking. Ronald Reagan was already in decline in 1984.
Possibly so, but he clearly wasn't as gone as Biden is. From Wiki:
In the next debate on October 21, however, in response to a question from journalist Henry Trewhitt about his age, Reagan joked, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Mondale himself laughed at the joke, and later admitted that Reagan had effectively neutralized the age issue:
If TV can tell the truth, as you say it can, you'll see that I was smiling. But I think if you come in close, you'll see some tears coming down because I knew he had gotten me there. That was really the end of my campaign that night, I think. [I told my wife] the campaign was over, and it was.
Yes, you say "the next debate".. what's unsaid here is that Reagan's first debate was.. not good.
You reckon Biden can turn it around as Reagan clearly did?
Yes. Which isn't to disagree with those who say he should step aside.
Fair enough, I am sceptical. Arguably, it shouldn't matter, and Americans should vote for a corpse over Trump, but that isn't going to happen. The Dems are more likely to win with someone else than with Biden. The sooner they realise this the better.
Who? Biden is the only Democrat who has beaten Trump in the rustbelt swing states. No evidence Newsom and Harris would, indeed both almost certainly would just repeat the 2016 result Hillary got
Whitmer.
Possibly. She is the only viable alternative.
Coastal liberal elitists Newsom and Harris would just be Hillary Clinton 2 v Trump
That’s not loyalty that’s wilful stupidity. This line is unsustainable
He didn’t “have a bad night”. The whole world saw a man unfit to be President
The whole world saw two men unfit to be President.
Sure I agree - but that Trump isn't fit is a matter of opinion whereas with Biden it is there for all to see.
Biden is best placed to beat Trump - the theory went - but does that still hold after last night? Dunno, but my gut is telling me that the reaction to the debate may be a tad excessive though so far today I've lacked the courage to back Biden some more on the markets...
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
Probably won't matter in terms of people being disenfranchised, it just makes the SNP government look even more bad.
I think this is a council issue, on the face of it.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Free movement has now ended and visa restrictions have been tightened, but 2023 immigration and 2022 immigration were both mahoosively larger than what you describe as New Labour's "open door immigration policy".
EU free movement worked at filling labour vacancies flexibly without huge long-term increases in the population.
From non EU nations and the ban on immigrants dependents and £36k salary requirement minimum only for immigrants came in this year.
EU free movement was so unpopular even Starmer has now dropped it
The Tory government has made some recent changes to immigration policy, but you can't act as if the last few years didn't happen. You might want to pretend that the 2021-3 figures never happened, but voters concerned by immigration haven't forgotten.
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
I once applied for a postal vote for the police commissioner elections (Derbyshire) and never received a postal vote. I was miffed but it was only PCC so I didn't worry too much about it.
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
That's the big hope for my (And even more so Casino's) books right now
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
No. He’s done.
No I think Leon's right. Biden should have made it clear he was stepping aside a long time ago. Now there are no good options and sticking with Biden is the least worst of a very bad set.
Hard to see Trump not winning now, and all that will entail. Oof
It is 7.30am here, and The New York Times — the in-house journal of a Democratic White House — is running four comment pieces today about Mr Biden’s age.
“Biden cannot go on like this,” reads the headline of one. “I don’t think Biden should be running,” says another.
“President Biden, it’s time to drop out,” writes a third, while Thomas Friedman, a Biden administration confidante, delivers the fatal blow.
“Joe Biden is a good man and a good president,” the headline reads. “He must drop out of the race.”
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
You could also argue, that people who argue the above do so because they want it to be true, not because it is true.
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
The thing is though whilst last night was bad for Biden he had performed better than expected at the state of the union. So it's difficult to know what to make of it and the Dems have quite a quandary.
"I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election."
"I had been ready to give Biden the benefit of the doubt up to now, because during the times I engaged with him one on one, I found him up to the job. He clearly is not any longer.
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
The thing is though whilst last night was bad for Biden he had performed better than expected at the state of the union. So it's difficult to know what to make of it and the Dems have quite a quandary.
He can't get any younger, so on average his ability to perform will only get worse, and possibly quite quickly.
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
Probably won't matter in terms of people being disenfranchised, it just makes the SNP government look even more bad.
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
The thing is though whilst last night was bad for Biden he had performed better than expected at the state of the union. So it's difficult to know what to make of it and the Dems have quite a quandary.
I watched it live. The first 30 minutes in particular wasn't he is having a bad debate, he literally couldn't utter a sentence, was confused / lost and appeared to freeze multiple times when Trump was talking. First 30 minute Joe is somebody if they were a relative you would be looking for a good care home for them immediately, as you couldn't trust them to be ok living at home on their own.
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
The thing is though whilst last night was bad for Biden he had performed better than expected at the state of the union. So it's difficult to know what to make of it and the Dems have quite a quandary.
There is no longer a quandary. It is blinding obvious now that, at the very least, he wont be able to do a full four year term, so Trump will hammer away at Harris.
So - might as well have Harris up there at the front of the ticket and accept reality.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
What is funny is that argument can only be made by someone who doesn’t perceive the vast and absurd change in the property market since *after* Thatcher was out of power.
When she was in power, it was still the case that prices went up sometimes. Sometimes they went *down*.
Owning property wasn’t a one way bet. If you bought a house and paid off the mortgage, you’d hope to beat inflation on your money.
Owning your home was about personal security in later life. If you own your home outright, you can live on very little.
I bought my first flat in 1998 - 8 years after Thatcher - for the same number of £ it sold for when built in 1988. Property crash.
What we have now is the result of 3 decades of demand exceeding supply.
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
No. He’s done.
According to the Guardian key Dems are doubling down on him. Not sure they will get rid of him, or if getting rid is the best strategy at the moment. Having a quick go on 270 to Win, if Biden holds Pennsylvania he should hang on. That's not impossible.
All that said, he should not have sought, nor should he have accepted, his party's nomination for President. When he was first elected I assumed that was the plan but knew it would have to be timed just right (hence discounted much of the talk about running again). I was wrong about that.
It's not even that I think he's necessarily demented but he is too old. I know some sharp elderly people but all of them slip words, repeat stories, lose the thread of conversation occasionally and none of them have the energy to be President.
I've seen the highlight clips as presented on BBC. You'd categorise the concerns as twofold, I think - the specific moments where the thread was lost and Biden's coherence broke down and secondly a certain lack of forcefulness and energy overall. All that did occur.
But, as evidence of mental unfitness, as some kind of medicalised brain decline, I don't take that overall.
We've all done it, haven't we? In speech you don't start a sentence with conscious awareness of the words you will end that sentence with and, particularly when you are putting together a verbal narrative or arguing a case, you can end up in a place in a sentence where the subconscious mental agility holding it together in the background can't get things back on track. I've done it, from young, many times including in job interviews - you have the stock bit of your answer, but as soon as you vary it you are off track. That is where Biden's Medicare exposition ended up. Anyone who says they never do it, I simply don't believe you.
That's not to say politicians as performers should not be better at this than you or I. But it is a very different thing to say Biden should have been more skilled in his craft, should have been better, can no longer cut it in politics, than to say he is in full mental decline - he appears to have been cognitively on point for all but a few wobbles in that 90 minute debate.
I mean, how many politicians in interview nowadays only get by the repetition of the exact wording they've been fed over and over again. Are their skills up to it? Far rather they trip now and again than endlessly parrot because they don't possess the skills. Those guys, Sunak included, sound a lot more like my Nan ended up speaking than Biden does.
So, to me, saying Biden isn't as sharp and mentally agile as he was, is frail, no longer has the skills of the slickest operators. All true. To expand the various stumbles to say Biden simply wasn't there. No, I don't get that at all.
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
My understanding is that people who already had a postal vote, such as the elderly or people who are often away on election day, will have received theirs earlier. We received ours and posted them a week ago. New applicants, such as those applying as they will be on holiday, were receiving theirs in a second tranche. These are the people who will be unable to vote.
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
Probably won't matter in terms of people being disenfranchised, it just makes the SNP government look even more bad.
Who is responsible? Isn't it a council issue?
Let’s not bother with trifling details like that.
Nah, people like to blame the Government for everything. Swinney has devised the correct response though: don't blame us, blame the Tories for calling an election during the school holidays.
Pro_Rate....live it was far worse than the highlights. It wasn't a person gets one answer a bit mixed up, it was total incoherence for the first half the debate.
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
No. He’s done.
No I think Leon's right. Biden should have made it clear he was stepping aside a long time ago. Now there are no good options and sticking with Biden is the least worst of a very bad set.
Hard to see Trump not winning now, and all that will entail. Oof
Sticking with Biden is not the least worst way forward.
He is not fit to be president for another four years and everyone this morning in America now knows it.
So what if the Dems are in chaos for the next two months while they select a new candidate. Once that is out of the way then the campaign can really begin.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
The difference between renting pre Thatcher and renting now is affordability. Social housing was deliberately affordable, and provided as a social service. Renting now is primarily for profit.
I have no idea how this affects things. Will suppress turnout for parents with young children (school holidays), some students perhaps. Good for the Tories/Lib Dems, bad for Labour/Greens?
But then older people are more likely to have postal votes. Hmmm.
Probably won't matter in terms of people being disenfranchised, it just makes the SNP government look even more bad.
Who is responsible? Isn't it a council issue?
Let’s not bother with trifling details like that.
Nah, people like to blame the Government for everything. Swinney has devised the correct response though: don't blame us, blame the Tories for calling an election during the school holidays.
A good deal of Conservative support is blaming the Tories for calling an election at all, it would be rude not take a slice of that action.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
The answer that's kindest to Maggie is that she took the stuff about the Parable of the Wealthy Samaritan seriously. That the winners from the society she created really would share their good fortune with others, if only to secure their future reputation. See the Great Victorian Philanthropists.
It can't be said to have worked out like that. I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt on the morality, even if it forces the conclusion that she was extremely naive. Maybe we need the occaisonal experience of having our world turned upside down to properly realise that we are all in this together. And the plague wasn't enough to do that in the medium term.
You’re both assuming something about owning property. That it is a one way punt to riches.
That only happened post 2000 - a decade after Thatcher left power.
Up till then, property went U.K. or down in cycles. If you were canny you beat inflation.
The unending rises only happened because property demand exceeded supply for decades. The answer is simple 1) reduce the population or 2) build more
Pro_Rate....live it was far worse than the highlights. It wasn't a person gets one answer a bit mixed up, it was total incoherence for the first half the debate.
I will try and see more of it, but don't know if I'll manage it.
Biden is out to 5.7 on beftair. Anyone else think the market is overreacting?
I don't know. We've never had an obviously senile President running for a second term. We have Grandpa Simpson vs a billionaire rapist with a combover. You tell me how to price this.
On the first part, I presume you're joking. Ronald Reagan was already in decline in 1984.
Possibly so, but he clearly wasn't as gone as Biden is. From Wiki:
In the next debate on October 21, however, in response to a question from journalist Henry Trewhitt about his age, Reagan joked, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Mondale himself laughed at the joke, and later admitted that Reagan had effectively neutralized the age issue:
If TV can tell the truth, as you say it can, you'll see that I was smiling. But I think if you come in close, you'll see some tears coming down because I knew he had gotten me there. That was really the end of my campaign that night, I think. [I told my wife] the campaign was over, and it was.
Watch the video - immediately before the famous bit, he says "And I want you to know, also" in a way which makes it clear this is a prepared line. His actual answer to the question is just "Not at all".
So maybe not demented, but hardly thinking on his feet.
You could argue people who said Biden was fit to stand again ought to perhaps admit that they were saying this not because it was true but because they wanted it to be true, and that's never a good basis for doing something.
The thing is though whilst last night was bad for Biden he had performed better than expected at the state of the union. So it's difficult to know what to make of it and the Dems have quite a quandary.
He can't get any younger, so on average his ability to perform will only get worse, and possibly quite quickly.
Biden appeared discernibly less coherent than Trump. He wasn't but appearance matters.
Trump was also incoherent but that was glossed over because Biden presented so poorly. Biden needs to go, and my view is whoever replaces him will see Trump off on the same basis we are asking Joe to step down.
Anyone who knows somebody with dementia as I do would not class Biden as having it.
There are several forms of dementia. They do not all have the same symptoms. My mother's partner had one of the less common ones and in its early stages it wasn't entirely dissimilar to how Biden is presenting.
Yes
As I’ve said my mother AND her husband are both formally diagnosed with dementia (which is a weird kind of blessing I think, in the circs). So I see it painfully close and it is quite distressing (so I have great sympathy for people close to Biden, unless they are enabling him to stay on - then they are dangerous fools)
My mum’s dementia is nothing like Biden’s. Her symptoms are constant repetition of stories and phrases and forgetting names/identities entirely. She often thinks I am her grandson
But physically if you looked at her (and didn’t listen) you might not even guess she is demented. However her husband is entirely different and with him there are many more physical symptoms - the vague staring, the bewildered face, the odd rictus smile, plus he wanders off for no reason - also his speech is incoherent gibberish quite a lot of the time. He REALLY resembles Biden
A very sad state of affairs. Tho there is seriously promising medicine in the works - for dementia - AIUI. Too late for Biden or my mum tho
Yes, with dementia the symptoms and rates of decline can vary a great deal. Joe Biden might well be in the early stages of a form of it but it's not possible for us to say. We can neither diagnose it nor rule it out. Point is, he looks too frail either to campaign effectively or to serve a 2nd term.
Is there anything there you disagree with?
The frailty thing is inarguable. C4 showed Biden after he’d landed in Atlanta and it was as painful as the clips of Biden’s responses in the debate. He now has that odd tippy-toe shuffling gait of the elderly who are unsteady on their feet, and his helpers in an act of Sunakian genius had him doing a walkabout holding hands with a bunch of fresh faced pre teen kids. The contrast was brutal.
Fwiw it's the physical aspect I've been most struck by. He's very rigid and it seems as if he could at any point topple over. The frequent inarticulacy, esp if tired and stressed, is less unusual (for a person his age) than that. Then there's the (oh god I can't summon up the will to list all the adjectives again) other guy, Donald Trump. What a shambles of a "debate". Worse even than feared. I wonder if that (imo) bit of an arsehole member of the public who came out with "are you two the best we've got?" at Starmer and Sunak in their debate watched it.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
The problem is that the build rate hasn’t matched the population growth.
Property only *moved* from slightly riskier than government bonds and a bit more return, to guaranteed double digit return when demand outstripped supply for decades.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
The answer that's kindest to Maggie is that she took the stuff about the Parable of the Wealthy Samaritan seriously. That the winners from the society she created really would share their good fortune with others, if only to secure their future reputation. See the Great Victorian Philanthropists.
It can't be said to have worked out like that. I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt on the morality, even if it forces the conclusion that she was extremely naive. Maybe we need the occaisonal experience of having our world turned upside down to properly realise that we are all in this together. And the plague wasn't enough to do that in the medium term.
You’re both assuming something about owning property. That it is a one way punt to riches.
That only happened post 2000 - a decade after Thatcher left power.
Up till then, property went U.K. or down in cycles. If you were canny you beat inflation.
The unending rises only happened because property demand exceeded supply for decades. The answer is simple 1) reduce the population or 2) build more
And route 1 isn't enough by itself, if those currently with property decide to take their property market winnings by staying in a bigger house than they strictly need. Which, to be clear, is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Really, we should have been building more since about the 1980s, which fuels my suspicion that we can't trust commerical builders to build at a socially desirable rate when they can make simpler profits by building less.
But we are where we are, and don't have a time machine.
Biden is out to 5.7 on beftair. Anyone else think the market is overreacting?
I don't know. We've never had an obviously senile President running for a second term. We have Grandpa Simpson vs a billionaire rapist with a combover. You tell me how to price this.
On the first part, I presume you're joking. Ronald Reagan was already in decline in 1984.
Possibly so, but he clearly wasn't as gone as Biden is. From Wiki:
In the next debate on October 21, however, in response to a question from journalist Henry Trewhitt about his age, Reagan joked, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Mondale himself laughed at the joke, and later admitted that Reagan had effectively neutralized the age issue:
If TV can tell the truth, as you say it can, you'll see that I was smiling. But I think if you come in close, you'll see some tears coming down because I knew he had gotten me there. That was really the end of my campaign that night, I think. [I told my wife] the campaign was over, and it was.
Yes, you say "the next debate".. what's unsaid here is that Reagan's first debate was.. not good.
You reckon Biden can turn it around as Reagan clearly did?
I don't think Reagan failed in 84 for either debate
I would doubt whether Wednesday's debate did as much damage to Starmer as you suspect. I like Rishi, but he came across as arrogant and aggressive. Starmer came across as polite but evasive. I suspect neither came out particularly well. The biggest criticism of Starmer since the debate has been that he allowed Sunak to unfairly bully him.
It seemed quite a pro-Tory audience, the questions were rubbish, particularly the elderly life-long Tory voter. Does being rude to the two participants inform the debate? "Your strings are being pulled by senior people in the Labour Party". SKS is the most senior person in the Labour Party, dearie. Mishal didn't moderate well, giving Sunak too much leeway.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
The answer that's kindest to Maggie is that she took the stuff about the Parable of the Wealthy Samaritan seriously. That the winners from the society she created really would share their good fortune with others, if only to secure their future reputation. See the Great Victorian Philanthropists.
It can't be said to have worked out like that. I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt on the morality, even if it forces the conclusion that she was extremely naive. Maybe we need the occaisonal experience of having our world turned upside down to properly realise that we are all in this together. And the plague wasn't enough to do that in the medium term.
You’re both assuming something about owning property. That it is a one way punt to riches.
That only happened post 2000 - a decade after Thatcher left power.
Up till then, property went U.K. or down in cycles. If you were canny you beat inflation.
The unending rises only happened because property demand exceeded supply for decades. The answer is simple 1) reduce the population or 2) build more
And route 1 isn't enough by itself, if those currently with property decide to take their property market winnings by staying in a bigger house than they strictly need. Which, to be clear, is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Really, we should have been building more since about the 1980s, which fuels my suspicion that we can't trust commerical builders to build at a socially desirable rate when they can make simpler profits by building less.
But we are where we are, and don't have a time machine.
The problem of a sellers strike has been known since Adam Smith. Avoid monopolies.
So in a locality, do not give the building of entire estates to a single firm.
“Inefficiency!” - is the cry I hear..,
Yet in Victorian and Edwardian times, whole suburbs were rapidly constructed by laying them out and selling the plots by the street (or half street) to different builders. Last one to finish loses…
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
The difference between renting pre Thatcher and renting now is affordability. Social housing was deliberately affordable, and provided as a social service. Renting now is primarily for profit.
It’s not really how council housing was meant to work.
Council housing was for the “respectable” working classes and lower middle classes. It was expected to turn a profit (albeit less than private house building). The poor were expected to rent privately or live on the streets.
That began to shift in the Sixties, with the introduction of rent controls (essentially killing off the private rented sector, as well as bringing in the kind of landlords who used menaces to gain vacant possession), and the construction of vast tower blocks (often very dangerous, and terrible to live in), into which problem tenants were decanted.
Council house sales had been advocated for decades (believe it or not, the USSR had them since the mid 50’s), and deregulating rents was quite necessary.
What’s been missing, in the past 25 years, has been house building on the necessary scale, but owner occupation rates are still well above the level of 1979.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
The problem is that the build rate hasn’t matched the population growth.
Property only *moved* from slightly riskier than government bonds and a bit more return, to guaranteed double digit return when demand outstripped supply for decades.
If the housing market was an ideal free market than yes but there are many distortions:
> Access to capital > Monopoly of land ownership > Algorithmic pricing > International buyers > Growing corporate holdings
Its certainly possible for huge amounts of building to happen but access to these properties to be constrained for the first time buyer and prices remain v-high.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
The difference between renting pre Thatcher and renting now is affordability. Social housing was deliberately affordable, and provided as a social service. Renting now is primarily for profit.
Affordability is simply a function of supply vs demand.
I understand that some progressives feel scared about the idea of really massive house building - 8 million properties sounds like concreting the countryside. But you should embrace it. Love it.
I know some will be upset that it needs to look more like the Circus in Bath than a nice Brutalist tower block. But sometimes you have to temper the socialism with a bit of bourgeois pastiche.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
It was only under Thatcher that the numbers owning property in the UK rather than renting clearly rose over 50% for the first time.
As William Glenn correctly pointed out the other day in a chart he showed it was under New Labour that the decline in home ownership rose most dramatically due to their open door immigration policy pushing up demand and prices. They also were building less homes a year than the Tories are now.
Free movement has now ended and we have tighter visa restrictions and we will see if Starmer is willing to build more on greenbelt land as his advisers suggest
Oh for sure, Thatcher certainly isn't to blame for all of this, but she did start the ball rolling by selling off the council house estate to those lucky enough to be in possession and have the means to buy at heavily discounted rates.
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
The problem is that the build rate hasn’t matched the population growth.
Property only *moved* from slightly riskier than government bonds and a bit more return, to guaranteed double digit return when demand outstripped supply for decades.
If the housing market was an ideal free market than yes but there are many distortions:
> Access to capital > Monopoly of land ownership > Algorithmic pricing > International buyers > Growing corporate holdings
Its certainly possible for huge amounts of building to happen but access to these properties to be constrained for the first time buyer and prices remain v-high.
If you prevent local monopoly of house building - instead on one developer per mega-estate, sell it by the street - then you prevent supply control.
Buttigieg is a practicing Anglican, a habit he picked up at Oxford, which surely should make him PB’s preferred Democrat runner.
Hardly, given apart from me and Cyclefree and a handful of others most on here are not practicing Anglicans
Most of us here are wondering why those few of you haven’t got the hang of it by now, and still have to practice? To qualify as Anglican you just have to profess to believe in some sort of God (the precise details left entirely to your own whim) whilst dismissing all of the literal stuff stated in the bible as allegorical, or analogous, or otherwise some kind of cunning word game that was conjured up by random writers two millennia back, to keep us future folks busy puzzling out.
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
The answer that's kindest to Maggie is that she took the stuff about the Parable of the Wealthy Samaritan seriously. That the winners from the society she created really would share their good fortune with others, if only to secure their future reputation. See the Great Victorian Philanthropists.
It can't be said to have worked out like that. I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt on the morality, even if it forces the conclusion that she was extremely naive. Maybe we need the occaisonal experience of having our world turned upside down to properly realise that we are all in this together. And the plague wasn't enough to do that in the medium term.
You’re both assuming something about owning property. That it is a one way punt to riches.
That only happened post 2000 - a decade after Thatcher left power.
Up till then, property went U.K. or down in cycles. If you were canny you beat inflation.
The unending rises only happened because property demand exceeded supply for decades. The answer is simple 1) reduce the population or 2) build more
And route 1 isn't enough by itself, if those currently with property decide to take their property market winnings by staying in a bigger house than they strictly need. Which, to be clear, is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Really, we should have been building more since about the 1980s, which fuels my suspicion that we can't trust commerical builders to build at a socially desirable rate when they can make simpler profits by building less.
But we are where we are, and don't have a time machine.
The issue is why were private builders building at a rate of knots from the 1920’s to the 1980’s, but not now.
1. Mergers and takeovers mean there are far fewer players in the market. Big companies profit from high prices. Small companies and builders benefit from constructing and selling. All the big players have huge land banks.
2. There’s no fiscal disincentive to building up land banks.
The answer must surely be to use the tax system to to disadvantage hoarding, and to benefit construction.
Buttigieg is a practicing Anglican, a habit he picked up at Oxford, which surely should make him PB’s preferred Democrat runner.
Hardly, given apart from me and Cyclefree and a handful of others most on here are not practicing Anglicans
Most of us here are wondering why those few of you haven’t got the hang of it by now, and still have to practice? To qualify as Anglican you just have to profess to believe in some sort of God (the precise details left entirely to your own whim) whilst dismissing all of the literal stuff stated in the bible as allegorical, or analogous, or otherwise some kind of cunning word game that was conjured up by random writers two millennia back, to keep us future folks busy puzzling out.
You also have to believe in the BCP and Parish system and in England his Majesty as your Supreme Governor
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
No. He’s done.
No I think Leon's right. Biden should have made it clear he was stepping aside a long time ago. Now there are no good options and sticking with Biden is the least worst of a very bad set.
Hard to see Trump not winning now, and all that will entail. Oof
A lot of ReformUK tweets now going around saying Trump US, Le Pen France then Farage UK
Buttigieg is a practicing Anglican, a habit he picked up at Oxford, which surely should make him PB’s preferred Democrat runner.
Hardly, given apart from me and Cyclefree and a handful of others most on here are not practicing Anglicans
Most of us here are wondering why those few of you haven’t got the hang of it by now, and still have to practice? To qualify as Anglican you just have to profess to believe in some sort of God (the precise details left entirely to your own whim) whilst dismissing all of the literal stuff stated in the bible as allegorical, or analogous, or otherwise some kind of cunning word game that was conjured up by random writers two millennia back, to keep us future folks busy puzzling out.
You also have to believe in the BCP and Parish system and in England his Majesty as your Supreme Governor
Is Common Worship, weak tea and coffee and a preference for being nicer (or at least passively passive aggressive) to each other no longer enough?
Just looking at the last week's polling - is this the first week we've had where a majority of polls have had the Tories under 20%?
Wagergate effect, I'd guess. Right at the outset, I'd jokingly said maybe this is the one election where we get used to the concept of 'swingaway' replacing 'swingback'. I didn't expect it to be true,
From National Service, to D-Day, to wagergate.
Its been a neverending pile of shite from the Tories campaign.
I believe it was @Casino_Royale who put it best the other day when he said at this point he could shit in his hands and clap and it would be more appealing than this campaign.
Its only fears of Labour I think that are keeping him and others voting Tory still.
- people over 35 account for 57% of England's renters (up from 49% in 2013) - prediction that demand from the over 35s will increase eightfold by 2030 - rents rose by a record 9.2% annually in March of this year - rents are 'unaffordable' for 30% of workers (as defgined as spending more than 30% of gross pay on rent)
So things are bad now, and if you believe that eightfold rise in demand by 2030 - even if you only believe it's half that - things are going to be immeasurably worse for the next generation who are likely to be 'renters for life' with all that entails both as adults, and being able to support yourself in old age.
For their failure to sort out the housing market alone, the Conservatives deserve to be out of office.
It's the ultimate failure of Margaret Thatcher's property owning democracy. It simply turned into an oligarchy dominated by the interests of the wealthy winners. But perhaps that was the point all along?
The answer that's kindest to Maggie is that she took the stuff about the Parable of the Wealthy Samaritan seriously. That the winners from the society she created really would share their good fortune with others, if only to secure their future reputation. See the Great Victorian Philanthropists.
It can't be said to have worked out like that. I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt on the morality, even if it forces the conclusion that she was extremely naive. Maybe we need the occaisonal experience of having our world turned upside down to properly realise that we are all in this together. And the plague wasn't enough to do that in the medium term.
You’re both assuming something about owning property. That it is a one way punt to riches.
That only happened post 2000 - a decade after Thatcher left power.
Up till then, property went U.K. or down in cycles. If you were canny you beat inflation.
The unending rises only happened because property demand exceeded supply for decades. The answer is simple 1) reduce the population or 2) build more
No, really it isn’t. The UK is extraordinarily open to foreign investment by random Russian or Chinese criminals investors. Property is a seen as a speculative investment, in a way that it simply isn’t on the continent, such that a whole cadre of the middle class think that managing a few BTLs is actually a worthwhile occupation. And the taxes on holding property, particularly unoccupied property, are pitiful against international comparison.
The financial aspects of the UK’s dysfunctional property market need to be addressed, alongside the supply and demand issues. If you go to most European countries you won’t find people sitting in their homes of a daytime watching endless TV programmes about people who buy, sell, and do up houses. Go figure.
My ushant problem is solved. I’ve dumped the van and rented an ebike so I can drink myself stupid all day. Sorted
This highlights one of my problems with France, and also its solution. I've enjoyed your little vignettes from your French trip. My problem with France has always been what do you do with it? Granted it has some pretty towns (which seem mostly sleepy and closed, apart from on rare and seemingly arbitrary occasions when they spring joyously to life) and some areas of pretty countryside. But how do you enjoy that? Simply driving from place to place and mooching about isn't much of a holiday, and also removes the #1 attraction of mooching about in France i.e. the possibility of imbibing copiously over a lengthy lunch. (We have done Breton cider previously, but French beer - the stuff they don't export, anyway - is also very good.) The best way to get around seems to be to be cycling. Having done a rudimentary amountof Google maps research this morning in reaction to this thought, France seems littered with attractive looking cycleways by which to get from place to place. And that way you feel you are really IN it, rather than merely getting a view of it from a metal box. I have absolutely no objection to e-bikes as some bike purists seem to - you still get the happy, due to the modicum of effort that you're putting in, of being part of the landscape that you're seeing, rather than just a spectator of it - but you can keep going for much longer. They strike me as splendid things.
And the French love cyclists! They have a romantic attachment to bikes and those who ride them (although outside of the towns, the Alps and Pyrenees, it's surprising how few of them ride themselves) so they give you loads of space, overtake politely and are friendly. And the infrastructure is every bit as good as your research suggests. I HIGHLY recommend a cycling holiday in France - with or without the e-.
Buttigieg is a practicing Anglican, a habit he picked up at Oxford, which surely should make him PB’s preferred Democrat runner.
Hardly, given apart from me and Cyclefree and a handful of others most on here are not practicing Anglicans
Most of us here are wondering why those few of you haven’t got the hang of it by now, and still have to practice? To qualify as Anglican you just have to profess to believe in some sort of God (the precise details left entirely to your own whim) whilst dismissing all of the literal stuff stated in the bible as allegorical, or analogous, or otherwise some kind of cunning word game that was conjured up by random writers two millennia back, to keep us future folks busy puzzling out.
You also have to believe in the BCP and Parish system and in England his Majesty as your Supreme Governor
Is Common Worship, weak tea and coffee and a preference for being nicer (or at least passively passive aggressive) to each other no longer enough?
A bit too watery for me on their own and the evangelical conservative wing certainly want a harder edge
My ushant problem is solved. I’ve dumped the van and rented an ebike so I can drink myself stupid all day. Sorted
This highlights one of my problems with France, and also its solution. I've enjoyed your little vignettes from your French trip. My problem with France has always been what do you do with it? Granted it has some pretty towns (which seem mostly sleepy and closed, apart from on rare and seemingly arbitrary occasions when they spring joyously to life) and some areas of pretty countryside. But how do you enjoy that? Simply driving from place to place and mooching about isn't much of a holiday, and also removes the #1 attraction of mooching about in France i.e. the possibility of imbibing copiously over a lengthy lunch. (We have done Breton cider previously, but French beer - the stuff they don't export, anyway - is also very good.) The best way to get around seems to be to be cycling. Having done a rudimentary amountof Google maps research this morning in reaction to this thought, France seems littered with attractive looking cycleways by which to get from place to place. And that way you feel you are really IN it, rather than merely getting a view of it from a metal box. I have absolutely no objection to e-bikes as some bike purists seem to - you still get the happy, due to the modicum of effort that you're putting in, of being part of the landscape that you're seeing, rather than just a spectator of it - but you can keep going for much longer. They strike me as splendid things.
And the French love cyclists! They have a romantic attachment to bikes and those who ride them (although outside of the towns, the Alps and Pyrenees, it's surprising how few of them ride themselves) so they give you loads of space, overtake politely and are friendly. And the infrastructure is every bit as good as your research suggests. I HIGHLY recommend a cycling holiday in France - with or without the e-.
Well obviously I agree with that as I do it every year.
I'm also pro e bikes, although I don't use one yet, but some day I will be too old or too fat and it is better being out on one than staying at home on the sofa. We saw lots in the Loire this year.
Judging by PB the Democrats will slowly convince themselves that Biden “wasn’t that bad really” that “it was just one night” and that “he will be better in the 2nd debate” (I’ve no idea why Trump would agree to one)
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
No. He’s done.
According to the Guardian key Dems are doubling down on him. Not sure they will get rid of him, or if getting rid is the best strategy at the moment. Having a quick go on 270 to Win, if Biden holds Pennsylvania he should hang on. That's not impossible.
All that said, he should not have sought, nor should he have accepted, his party's nomination for President. When he was first elected I assumed that was the plan but knew it would have to be timed just right (hence discounted much of the talk about running again). I was wrong about that.
It's not even that I think he's necessarily demented but he is too old. I know some sharp elderly people but all of them slip words, repeat stories, lose the thread of conversation occasionally and none of them have the energy to be President.
He needs to do a bit more than just hold PA - of the swing states, he also needs to hold MI, WI, and either Omaha (this combo would give bang on 270), or one of GA, AZ, NV.
I would doubt whether Wednesday's debate did as much damage to Starmer as you suspect. I like Rishi, but he came across as arrogant and aggressive. Starmer came across as polite but evasive. I suspect neither came out particularly well. The biggest criticism of Starmer since the debate has been that he allowed Sunak to unfairly bully him.
It seemed quite a pro-Tory audience, the questions were rubbish, particularly the elderly life-long Tory voter. Does being rude to the two participants inform the debate? "Your strings are being pulled by senior people in the Labour Party". SKS is the most senior person in the Labour Party, dearie. Mishal didn't moderate well, giving Sunak too much leeway.
The audience was 1/3 Tory, 1/3 Lab and 1/3 undecided so more Tory than current polling.
The BBCQT on Thursday was a lot more considered and informative.
I really don't think the head to heads work in the current style, though it looks that we are stuck with them.
Comments
Add in the sheer complexity of getting Biden to step aside and the vexed question of Who Next and it means that they will reluctantly stick with Biden. Having damaged him hugely with open speculations about his mental health
And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe that is the only choice at this late point. But this is a lesson in not lying to yourself, and confronting facts face on, however uncomfortable
EU free movement was so unpopular even Starmer has now dropped it
When she was in power, it was still the case that prices went up sometimes. Sometimes they went *down*.
Owning property wasn’t a one way bet. If you bought a house and paid off the mortgage, you’d hope to beat inflation on your money.
Owning your home was about personal security in later life. If you own your home outright, you can live on very little.
I bought my first flat in 1998 - 8 years after Thatcher - for the same number of £ it sold for when built in 1988. Property crash.
What we have now is the result of 3 decades of demand exceeding supply.
Coastal liberal elitists Newsom and Harris would just be Hillary Clinton 2 v Trump
Biden is best placed to beat Trump - the theory went - but does that still hold after last night? Dunno, but my gut is telling me that the reaction to the debate may be a tad excessive though so far today I've lacked the courage to back Biden some more on the markets...
What's followed since is the commodification of housing, turning it from somewhere to live into an investment class. The consequences for the increasing percentage of the populace not in possession of the commodity and unable to afford it has been catastrophic.
The dominant class of tenancy at the end of the Seventies was social housing. Scalper landlords had been driven practically to the wall, and this was seen to be a good thing. All the mass privatisation of housing has achieved is to bring mass scale rentierism back with a vengeance.
What all these millions and millions of people who are going to be renting until they die are meant to do, I've no idea. Work til they drop down dead, I suppose? The escalating state pension and healthcare bill for the elderly is already crippling and we can't afford to double the pension so that octogenarian tenants who are stuck paying astronomical rents can afford to do so without having to leave the heating off in Winter and try to survive on one jam sandwich a day.
The failure of the housing market has been a catastrophe for the nation, and its roots are firmly planted in the Eighties.
Cons 1.4
LD 3.5
Surely the most interesting bet at the moment?
Hard to see Trump not winning now, and all that will entail. Oof
“Biden cannot go on like this,” reads the headline of one. “I don’t think Biden should be running,” says another.
“President Biden, it’s time to drop out,” writes a third, while Thomas Friedman, a Biden administration confidante, delivers the fatal blow.
“Joe Biden is a good man and a good president,” the headline reads. “He must drop out of the race.”
He seems to have acquitted himself well with his non-public opinions, with polite puncturing of Trump's fantasies.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-pranksters-release-hoax-video-call-with-uks-david-cameron-about-ukraine-2024-06-26/
At least they’re not the dinky little numbers that barely concealed Nige’s dignity (such as that is).
"I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election."
"I had been ready to give Biden the benefit of the doubt up to now, because during the times I engaged with him one on one, I found him up to the job. He clearly is not any longer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/joe-biden-tom-friedman.html
Thank god it’s Friday
So - might as well have Harris up there at the front of the ticket and accept reality.
All that said, he should not have sought, nor should he have accepted, his party's nomination for President. When he was first elected I assumed that was the plan but knew it would have to be timed just right (hence discounted much of the talk about running again). I was wrong about that.
It's not even that I think he's necessarily demented but he is too old. I know some sharp elderly people but all of them slip words, repeat stories, lose the thread of conversation occasionally and none of them have the energy to be President.
I've seen the highlight clips as presented on BBC. You'd categorise the concerns as twofold, I think - the specific moments where the thread was lost and Biden's coherence broke down and secondly a certain lack of forcefulness and energy overall. All that did occur.
But, as evidence of mental unfitness, as some kind of medicalised brain decline, I don't take that overall.
We've all done it, haven't we? In speech you don't start a sentence with conscious awareness of the words you will end that sentence with and, particularly when you are putting together a verbal narrative or arguing a case, you can end up in a place in a sentence where the subconscious mental agility holding it together in the background can't get things back on track. I've done it, from young, many times including in job interviews - you have the stock bit of your answer, but as soon as you vary it you are off track. That is where Biden's Medicare exposition ended up. Anyone who says they never do it, I simply don't believe you.
That's not to say politicians as performers should not be better at this than you or I. But it is a very different thing to say Biden should have been more skilled in his craft, should have been better, can no longer cut it in politics, than to say he is in full mental decline - he appears to have been cognitively on point for all but a few wobbles in that 90 minute debate.
I mean, how many politicians in interview nowadays only get by the repetition of the exact wording they've been fed over and over again. Are their skills up to it? Far rather they trip now and again than endlessly parrot because they don't possess the skills. Those guys, Sunak included, sound a lot more like my Nan ended up speaking than Biden does.
So, to me, saying Biden isn't as sharp and mentally agile as he was, is frail, no longer has the skills of the slickest operators. All true. To expand the various stumbles to say Biden simply wasn't there. No, I don't get that at all.
NEW THREAD
He is not fit to be president for another four years and everyone this morning in America now knows it.
So what if the Dems are in chaos for the next two months while they select a new candidate. Once that is out of the way then the campaign can really begin.
That only happened post 2000 - a decade after Thatcher left power.
Up till then, property went U.K. or down in cycles. If you were canny you beat inflation.
The unending rises only happened because property demand exceeded supply for decades. The answer is simple 1) reduce the population or 2) build more
I took it as "here was the worst of it"
Watch the video - immediately before the famous bit, he says "And I want you to know, also" in a way which makes it clear this is a prepared line. His actual answer to the question is just "Not at all".
So maybe not demented, but hardly thinking on his feet.
Trump was also incoherent but that was glossed over because Biden presented so poorly. Biden needs to go, and my view is whoever replaces him will see Trump off on the same basis we are asking Joe to step down.
Property only *moved* from slightly riskier than government bonds and a bit more return, to guaranteed double digit return when demand outstripped supply for decades.
Really, we should have been building more since about the 1980s, which fuels my suspicion that we can't trust commerical builders to build at a socially desirable rate when they can make simpler profits by building less.
But we are where we are, and don't have a time machine.
So in a locality, do not give the building of entire estates to a single firm.
“Inefficiency!” - is the cry I hear..,
Yet in Victorian and Edwardian times, whole suburbs were rapidly constructed by laying them out and selling the plots by the street (or half street) to different builders. Last one to finish loses…
Council housing was for the “respectable” working classes and lower middle classes. It was expected to turn a profit (albeit less than private house building). The poor were expected to rent privately or live on the streets.
That began to shift in the Sixties, with the introduction of rent controls (essentially killing off the private rented sector, as well as bringing in the kind of landlords who used menaces to gain vacant possession), and the construction of vast tower blocks (often very dangerous, and terrible to live in), into which problem tenants were decanted.
Council house sales had been advocated for decades (believe it or not, the USSR had them since the mid 50’s), and deregulating rents was quite necessary.
What’s been missing, in the past 25 years, has been house building on the necessary scale, but owner occupation rates are still well above the level of 1979.
> Access to capital
> Monopoly of land ownership
> Algorithmic pricing
> International buyers
> Growing corporate holdings
Its certainly possible for huge amounts of building to happen but access to these properties to be constrained for the first time buyer and prices remain v-high.
I understand that some progressives feel scared about the idea of really massive house building - 8 million properties sounds like concreting the countryside. But you should embrace it. Love it.
I know some will be upset that it needs to look more like the Circus in Bath than a nice Brutalist tower block. But sometimes you have to temper the socialism with a bit of bourgeois pastiche.
This is what the Victorians and Edwardians did.
1. Mergers and takeovers mean there are far fewer players in the market. Big companies profit from high prices. Small companies and builders benefit from constructing and selling. All the big players have huge land banks.
2. There’s no fiscal disincentive to building up land banks.
The answer must surely be to use the tax system to to disadvantage hoarding, and to benefit construction.
The financial aspects of the UK’s dysfunctional property market need to be addressed, alongside the supply and demand issues. If you go to most European countries you won’t find people sitting in their homes of a daytime watching endless TV programmes about people who buy, sell, and do up houses. Go figure.
I'm also pro e bikes, although I don't use one yet, but some day I will be too old or too fat and it is better being out on one than staying at home on the sofa. We saw lots in the Loire this year.
The BBCQT on Thursday was a lot more considered and informative.
I really don't think the head to heads work in the current style, though it looks that we are stuck with them.