How does the greenery of Brighton and Bristol (deffo to the left of Labour) mesh with the greenery of Herefordshire and Waveney Valley (rural preservation)?
It's a good question.
The Green Party that I remember from when I was a member a decade or more ago when I lived in England, was united over the ends it wanted to achieve, but had a wife range of views over the best means.
Traditionally the Left, when organised into parties, has been intolerant of dissent, and intolerant of disagreement on the means to employ to achieve its desired ends. The means have often been substituted for the ends, so any disagreement on means is seen as opposition to the ends.
Whether the Greens are as open and plural these days I am not so sure, with the large changes in membership after the Brexit referendum, and post-Corbyn's leadership of Labour. The way in which the party has reacted to those with gender critical views is not promising.
They're incredibly authoritarian. In the last council elections here, they broke through with two councillors, then told them both that they expected the councillors to vote according to however the local Green party mandated them (which strictly is not legal), and promptly both those councillors resigned the party and now sit as independents.
That's... not authoritarian? That is just the difference between representatives and delegates - with representatives being given the onus to try and intuit the will of their constituents and delegates only being authorised to go as far as the mandate they have been given by another democratic body. I actually prefer a delegate system - I think that is more democratic overall. It isn't compatible with the British system, and in this instance doesn't really work because those councillors are supposed to represent their wards and the party, not just the party, but I do think there is a place for that kind of decision making in our politics.
So, the claim that young people were flocking in their droves to Reform, as repeatedly touted on here by @Leon turns out to be complete and utter rubbish. Why should we be surprised?
So, the claim that young people were flocking in their droves to Reform, as repeatedly touted on here by @Leon turns out to be complete and utter rubbish. Why should we be surprised?
The youngest age group is the only age group where more voters supported Reform then the Tories, so the claim is not entirely without merit.
The youngest age group are the age group with the smallest percentage supporting Reform.
The claim young people in particular support Reform is entirely without merit, on the numbers. That they also don't support another party is irrelevant.
1433 words, @148grss : if you'd've just added 47 words more, you'd be 1480grss
(we shall now have a moment of silence for the days where Cyclefree and I used to argue about whether 1200 words was too long: ydoethur's 1800 word monster killed it)
As for the article itself, I enjoyed it a great deal. I do have one minor complaint: the lack of labelling on the graphs. This is particularly true of the HzBrandenburg graph, which is incomprehensible. I've just looked at his twix https://nitter.poast.org/HzBrandenburg/status/1810652821840105685#m and I still don't know what it says. Seat percentages for each seat, with the X-axis being Labour percentage descending?
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
One thing that I found frustrating during our hunt for a new house near the coast (especially the SW) was literally finding hundreds of seemingly normal houses and bungalows of all types for sale on regular streets and roads, in small towns and villages (not in holiday parks) on Rightmove, that once you looked at the details were only available to buy as holiday homes/lets that you couldn't live in and can't be your main residence.
So, the claim that young people were flocking in their droves to Reform, as repeatedly touted on here by @Leon turns out to be complete and utter rubbish. Why should we be surprised?
Tory support is five times higher among the elderly, whereas for Reform it's not even double the level among the young. Which is striking - the emergence of Reform appears to have contributed further to the erosion of Tory support among those of working age. Probably because right-leaning younger voters are more willing to shop around with their vote, whereas those of more advanced age are stuck in their habits (an example does come to mind...).
It does look from this chart as if younger voters were far less wedded to the two-party system and tactical voting than older voters, which may be a question of experience and tactical naivete, or may represent an actual shift.
Encouraging to see such high Lib Dem votes among the young. For years our support has been pretty much flat across all age groups.
Both are right IMHO. That younger people tend to be more ideological and want to express a positive vote rather than a negative one doesn't need arguing, I think. That the young are less attached to family/community/cultural voting patterns and more willing to shop around goes along with the consumer-driven choice of the internet era.
One thing that was noticeable in our neck of the woods was the lack of manpower the Tories had. They had a Facebook page that was updated daily and had a team of about 10 - 12 going out and we were impressed and maybe a little worried. our teams were typically about 3 - 5. Then it dawned on us. This was it. There was nothing else. This team visited about 5 different areas every day. They had one person for a number of big villages (he was highlighted doing so each day). Whereas we had multiple teams everyday as well as dozens of deliverers out everyday. They turned up at the end of my road one day and were gone within an hour.
As well as all the time spent travelling from one place to another they also stopped 3 or 4 times in cafes and pubs and did reviews of them together with pictures on their Facebook page. On polling day they were dressed up for the count in a pub before the polls had closed again posted on their Facebook page. We were knocking up until 10 pm.
It was interesting that there were lots of comments about how hard they were working. I don't think any of them would last 5 minutes on a LD team.
1433 words, @148grss : if you'd've just added 47 words more, you'd be 1480grss
(we shall now have a moment of silence for the days where Cyclefree and I used to argue about whether 1200 words was too long: ydoethur's 1800 word monster killed it)
As for the article itself, I enjoyed it a great deal. I do have one minor complaint: the lack of labelling on the graphs. This is particularly true of the HzBrandenburg graph, which is incomprehensible. I've just looked at his twix https://nitter.poast.org/HzBrandenburg/status/1810652821840105685#m and I still don't know what it says. Seat percentages for each seat, with the X-axis being Labour percentage descending?
Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar Jul 8 Those who have spoken to Sunak describe him as shellshocked by election result, she revealed. He has been calling all former Tory MPs who lost their seats over weekend, engaging in personal conversations of sometimes more than 10 minutes. Jul 8, 2024 · 9:23 PM UTC
We forget that politicians are people with emotions and can be traumatised by events. A man who was keenly interested in AI, promoted chess and was paranoid about 15-minute cities, his ministry was silly, reactive, never got to grip with the real problems and (in some cases eg the immigration spike) actually made them worse. So in a sense this was deserved. But I'm not enjoying his discomfort.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
Yes in many areas holiday homes and lets are a major issue, it not only prices low-paid locals out of the area, but also makes a lot of service businesses unviable for large portions of the year.
There needs to be a compromise that allows, for example, a family living in Wimbledon or Silverstone to get the hell out of Dodge on event week and rent their place to people there for the event - something that’s been happening for decades and causes no issues - while preventing housing in picturesque or seaside towns from being dominated by either short-term lets or second homes only occupied for a few weeks a year.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
One thing that I found frustrating during our hunt for a new house near the coast (especially the SW) was literally finding hundreds of seemingly normal houses and bungalows of all types for sale on regular streets and roads, in small towns and villages (not in holiday parks) on Rightmove, that once you looked at the details were only available to buy as holiday homes/lets that you couldn't live in and can't be your main residence.
See also retirement flats. See also part ownership. See also leasehold houses....
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
Though notable that those who "strongly oppose" the notion significantly outnumber those who "strongly support" it, by about two to one.
They need to look at what has happened to the GOP. Letting MAGA in didn't make the GOP stronger, it let MAGA take over. If you want Nigel Farage to lead your party you can always leave the Tories and join his company or whatever it is.
1433 words, @148grss : if you'd've just added 47 words more, you'd be 1480grss
(we shall now have a moment of silence for the days where Cyclefree and I used to argue about whether 1200 words was too long: ydoethur's 1800 word monster killed it)
As for the article itself, I enjoyed it a great deal. I do have one minor complaint: the lack of labelling on the graphs. This is particularly true of the HzBrandenburg graph, which is incomprehensible. I've just looked at his twix https://nitter.poast.org/HzBrandenburg/status/1810652821840105685#m and I still don't know what it says. Seat percentages for each seat, with the X-axis being Labour percentage descending?
Party vote percentage per seat with focus on Labours percentage descending, yes.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
One thing that I found frustrating during our hunt for a new house near the coast (especially the SW) was literally finding hundreds of seemingly normal houses and bungalows of all types for sale on regular streets and roads, in small towns and villages (not in holiday parks) on Rightmove, that once you looked at the details were only available to buy as holiday homes/lets that you couldn't live in and can't be your main residence.
Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar Jul 8 Those who have spoken to Sunak describe him as shellshocked by election result, she revealed. He has been calling all former Tory MPs who lost their seats over weekend, engaging in personal conversations of sometimes more than 10 minutes. Jul 8, 2024 · 9:23 PM UTC
We forget that politicians are people with emotions and can be traumatised by events. A man who was keenly interested in AI, promoted chess and was paranoid about 15-minute cities, his ministry was silly, reactive, never got to grip with the real problems and (in some cases eg the immigration spike) actually made them worse. So in a sense this was deserved. But I'm not enjoying his discomfort.
I spent a day out so feeling sorry for JRM who, on reflection, seemed to be wrong headed and none too bright, but amusing and a good family man. And then he started speaking again instead of maintaining a dignified silence during a period of reflection.
One thing that was noticeable in our neck of the woods was the lack of manpower the Tories had. They had a Facebook page that was updated daily and had a team of about 10 - 12 going out and we were impressed and maybe a little worried. our teams were typically about 3 - 5. Then it dawned on us. This was it. There was nothing else. This team visited about 5 different areas every day. They had one person for a number of big villages (he was highlighted doing so each day). Whereas we had multiple teams everyday as well as dozens of deliverers out everyday. They turned up at the end of my road one day and were gone within an hour.
As well as all the time spent travelling from one place to another they also stopped 3 or 4 times in cafes and pubs and did reviews of them together with pictures on their Facebook page. On polling day they were dressed up for the count in a pub before the polls had closed again posted on their Facebook page. We were knocking up until 10 pm.
It was interesting that there were lots of comments about how hard they were working. I don't think any of them would last 5 minutes on a LD team.
I suspect that partly reflected the age of their members; campaigning is a tiring business, especially on polling day, and my old routine of getting up at 5am for the early morning delivery, continuing all day with spells of telling the only break, then going to the count and staying alert through to a 5am declaration, is something I coulnd't do nowadays. Doing nothing all day and staying up in an armchair for Truss is tiring enough.
It's also hard to be motivated when yout tide is going out. Most of the LibDems won by decent margins - in some cases massive margins (e.g. Chichester), and so there really weren't many places where a red hot campaign would have made any difference for the Tories.
Election day is one of those activities where the reward to effort ratio is incredibly low, yet you have to do it to avoid the feeling you'll have if years of campaigning effort misses on the day by 50.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
So, the claim that young people were flocking in their droves to Reform, as repeatedly touted on here by @Leon turns out to be complete and utter rubbish. Why should we be surprised?
That YouGov analysis is an interesting read, according to their analysis Voting Labour positively correlates with level of education and salary, not sure how that aligns with the PB subset
No that wasn't entirely true in 2024, certainly on salary level. This year it was the Tories and LDs who did best with upper middle class ABs relative to the rest of their voters and the LDs did better with middle class C1s than working class C2s and DEs. Labour did almost as well with DEs as ABs and better with DEs than lower middle class C1s.
"Those with a higher household income were more likely to vote Labour than those with a lower household income. A third (32-34%) of those income groups below £50,000 voted for Labour compared to four in ten (40%) of those in household income groups making £50,000 a year or more."
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar Jul 8 Those who have spoken to Sunak describe him as shellshocked by election result, she revealed. He has been calling all former Tory MPs who lost their seats over weekend, engaging in personal conversations of sometimes more than 10 minutes. Jul 8, 2024 · 9:23 PM UTC
We forget that politicians are people with emotions and can be traumatised by events. A man who was keenly interested in AI, promoted chess and was paranoid about 15-minute cities, his ministry was silly, reactive, never got to grip with the real problems and (in some cases eg the immigration spike) actually made them worse. So in a sense this was deserved. But I'm not enjoying his discomfort.
I spent a day out so feeling sorry for JRM who, on reflection, seemed to be wrong headed and none too bright, but amusing and a good family man. And then he started speaking again instead of maintaining a dignified silence during a period of reflection.
The clue to understanding JRM is that he is actually an English terminator written by an American who saw Mary Poppins
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
Why don't we need 4 bed houses in the green belt?
If people have or want a family, and need a house, why they should not be available?
There isn't anywhere in the entire country with sufficient housing. The idea that some places are the "wrong place to build" is a complete fallacy, there is no wrong place, there is demand and a shortage of supply absolutely everywhere.
All increase in supply lowers prices, if you get a load of luxury flats built then people who currently live in affordable flats can maybe move into the luxury flats which frees up the affordable flats they were living in for someone else, so an increase in supply of luxury flats increases the supply of affordable flats too.
AI Summary: The text discusses the historical significance of the United Kingdom, highlighting its evolution from a small island nation to a global power through deep water navigation and industrialization. The UK's financial hub in London played a crucial role in its global influence, but post-World War II, challenges arose with the decline of its empire and competition from other financial centers like New York. The UK's entry into the European Union in the early 1970s revitalized its financial status, but Brexit has since disrupted this stability. The recent election results reflect the economic impact of Brexit, leading to a significant shift in political power. The UK now faces the challenge of redefining its economic strategy and global position, either by joining a new group or undergoing a comprehensive economic reformation. The future of the UK hinges on its ability to adapt to changing global dynamics and secure a strong market for its goods and services.
I did comment a few days ago and that in your area my wife noted that some of the younger Scots including her nieces son voted reform and they attracted twice your vote in your constituency
I hope the few remaining conservative mps have the good sense not to put Braverman or Jenrick on the ballot for leader as the membership continues its idiotic choices
With over 4 million votes Reform outpolled the Lib Dems and they are not to be dismissed lightly but the conservatives must not pander to Farage but start on a slow and difficult path to electoral recovery
Thanks @148grss for a really interesting piece. Lots of good detail on the results.
I'm a fellow lefty but firmly a democrat and have reluctantly accepted that our country isn't currently as left wing as I am.
Your language of bullying Labour leaves me wondering - what importance does democracy have in your vision? Do you accept the idea that unless the Green party can sell their policies to enough of the public they shouldn't run the country? And that, acknowledging the massive flaws with FPTP, a very centrist Labour party is the only party with democratic legitimacy right now?
Farage' s comment on the "little guy's yesterday shows why REFORM will not replace the Tories with him at the helm. His schtick does well to win over 15-20% but in order to win over the next batch of seats and get 30% he needs to know which battles to pick and be a bit smarter about espousing every opinion he holds.
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
1433 words, @148grss : if you'd've just added 47 words more, you'd be 1480grss
(we shall now have a moment of silence for the days where Cyclefree and I used to argue about whether 1200 words was too long: ydoethur's 1800 word monster killed it)
As for the article itself, I enjoyed it a great deal. I do have one minor complaint: the lack of labelling on the graphs. This is particularly true of the HzBrandenburg graph, which is incomprehensible. I've just looked at his twix https://nitter.poast.org/HzBrandenburg/status/1810652821840105685#m and I still don't know what it says. Seat percentages for each seat, with the X-axis being Labour percentage descending?
Party vote percentage per seat with focus on Labours percentage descending, yes.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
The law needs to be changed to remove the NIMBYs having a say. Westminster could change the law tomorrow, but people want to pander to "local opinion".
The only local opinion that should matter is the landowner's, its deeply illiberal for curtain twitchers to get a say on what other people do with their property.
Now that Labour have lifted the moratorium on onshore wind, it's worth remembering that the largest number of objections to onshore wind farm applications came from the Met Office, because the best places for wind turbines on land is on the sides of hills where they would block the rainfall radar on the top of the hill.
So there is a need for a planning system that would reconcile conflicts like this where an intended use for land creates an adverse impact. But the system should also be capable of swiftly dismissing spurious objections that have no merit.
Our local airport (when it was operational) objected to the local wind "farms" due to them interfering with radar, although eventually that was worked around. You can definitely see them on the weather radar though.
I do hope we aren't going to end up with wind turbines on every hill. Not least because building them on peat is really bad.
Ruining our landscapes when there are better alternatives also seems daft. We should concentrate on offshore, which is far better all round
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
The law needs to be changed to remove the NIMBYs having a say. Westminster could change the law tomorrow, but people want to pander to "local opinion".
The only local opinion that should matter is the landowner's, its deeply illiberal for curtain twitchers to get a say on what other people do with their property.
Now that Labour have lifted the moratorium on onshore wind, it's worth remembering that the largest number of objections to onshore wind farm applications came from the Met Office, because the best places for wind turbines on land is on the sides of hills where they would block the rainfall radar on the top of the hill.
So there is a need for a planning system that would reconcile conflicts like this where an intended use for land creates an adverse impact. But the system should also be capable of swiftly dismissing spurious objections that have no merit.
Our local airport (when it was operational) objected to the local wind "farms" due to them interfering with radar, although eventually that was worked around. You can definitely see them on the weather radar though.
I do hope we aren't going to end up with wind turbines on every hill. Not least because building them on peat is really bad.
Ruining our landscapes when there are better alternatives also seems daft. We should concentrate on offshore, which is far better all round
The economic case for windfarms outside of overt subsidy and hidden subsidy is a lot tougher than it appears. If the government are actually wanting to see lots of windfarms its going to need to guarantee better prices.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Woah, tyranny of percentages. The fact that X has increased by 14% and Y has increased by 14% does not mean that they have increased by the same absolute amount. To give a made-up example that I have just made up:
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
The law needs to be changed to remove the NIMBYs having a say. Westminster could change the law tomorrow, but people want to pander to "local opinion".
The only local opinion that should matter is the landowner's, its deeply illiberal for curtain twitchers to get a say on what other people do with their property.
Now that Labour have lifted the moratorium on onshore wind, it's worth remembering that the largest number of objections to onshore wind farm applications came from the Met Office, because the best places for wind turbines on land is on the sides of hills where they would block the rainfall radar on the top of the hill.
So there is a need for a planning system that would reconcile conflicts like this where an intended use for land creates an adverse impact. But the system should also be capable of swiftly dismissing spurious objections that have no merit.
Our local airport (when it was operational) objected to the local wind "farms" due to them interfering with radar, although eventually that was worked around. You can definitely see them on the weather radar though.
I do hope we aren't going to end up with wind turbines on every hill. Not least because building them on peat is really bad.
Ruining our landscapes when there are better alternatives also seems daft. We should concentrate on offshore, which is far better all round
The economic case for windfarms outside of overt subsidy and hidden subsidy is a lot tougher than it appears. If the government are actually wanting to see lots of windfarms its going to need to guarantee better prices.
Yes the problem is, as usual, government trying to interfere with the market.
Let landowners put up turbines on their own land, if it helps with their own energy use, and let energy providers set buy and sell prices according to supply and demand at any given time.
The amount of utter garbage I've read about what the UK and French elections mean for the US Presidential Election has been ridiculous. Most of the commentary assumes there is direct Republican vs Democrat, or Trump vs Biden parallel. They really don't get how narrow and skewed to the right US politics is, or that other countries have many substantive political parties, or that we aren't all electing Presidents, or that we have very different issues at the fore.
One thing that was noticeable in our neck of the woods was the lack of manpower the Tories had. They had a Facebook page that was updated daily and had a team of about 10 - 12 going out and we were impressed and maybe a little worried. our teams were typically about 3 - 5. Then it dawned on us. This was it. There was nothing else. This team visited about 5 different areas every day. They had one person for a number of big villages (he was highlighted doing so each day). Whereas we had multiple teams everyday as well as dozens of deliverers out everyday. They turned up at the end of my road one day and were gone within an hour.
As well as all the time spent travelling from one place to another they also stopped 3 or 4 times in cafes and pubs and did reviews of them together with pictures on their Facebook page. On polling day they were dressed up for the count in a pub before the polls had closed again posted on their Facebook page. We were knocking up until 10 pm.
It was interesting that there were lots of comments about how hard they were working. I don't think any of them would last 5 minutes on a LD team.
I suspect that partly reflected the age of their members; campaigning is a tiring business, especially on polling day, and my old routine of getting up at 5am for the early morning delivery, continuing all day with spells of telling the only break, then going to the count and staying alert through to a 5am declaration, is something I coulnd't do nowadays. Doing nothing all day and staying up in an armchair for Truss is tiring enough.
It's also hard to be motivated when yout tide is going out. Most of the LibDems won by decent margins - in some cases massive margins (e.g. Chichester), and so there really weren't many places where a red hot campaign would have made any difference for the Tories.
Election day is one of those activities where the reward to effort ratio is incredibly low, yet you have to do it to avoid the feeling you'll have if years of campaigning effort misses on the day by 50.
Luckily I am quite fit for a 69 year old. I pulled a 30 hour stint on election day (obviously slightly more than a day). I should have been in bed a few hours earlier than that but the adrenaline was still pumping and I couldn't sleep. I slept for a few hours late Saturday morning and afternoon and felt like rubbish when I got up. Back to bed at 9pm Saturday night. Surrey Heath and Woking were partying Saturday night.
AI Summary: The text discusses the historical significance of the United Kingdom, highlighting its evolution from a small island nation to a global power through deep water navigation and industrialization. The UK's financial hub in London played a crucial role in its global influence, but post-World War II, challenges arose with the decline of its empire and competition from other financial centers like New York. The UK's entry into the European Union in the early 1970s revitalized its financial status, but Brexit has since disrupted this stability. The recent election results reflect the economic impact of Brexit, leading to a significant shift in political power. The UK now faces the challenge of redefining its economic strategy and global position, either by joining a new group or undergoing a comprehensive economic reformation. The future of the UK hinges on its ability to adapt to changing global dynamics and secure a strong market for its goods and services.
How do you get an AI summary from a YouTube video?
Thanks @148grss for a really interesting piece. Lots of good detail on the results.
I'm a fellow lefty but firmly a democrat and have reluctantly accepted that our country isn't currently as left wing as I am.
Your language of bullying Labour leaves me wondering - what importance does democracy have in your vision? Do you accept the idea that unless the Green party can sell their policies to enough of the public they shouldn't run the country? And that, acknowledging the massive flaws with FPTP, a very centrist Labour party is the only party with democratic legitimacy right now?
Bullying is the colloquial term I use for organising, campaigning against and lobbying. And the left, unlike the capital rich right, needs to do that from grass roots rather than one rich person getting a meeting with a minister.
And as for democratic legitimacy, part of my argument is that in the UK that legitimacy is weak - the vast majority of people did not vote for this Labour party. If you want a majority of voters you could do so on a coalition of Lab/LD/Green (roughly 52% of the vote), which in my mind would be to the left of this government. You could also find a majority in Lab/Con/Ref - which is what we don't want to happen but if you listen to the likes of Blair is more than likely what this government will do - pander to the right.
I think democracy is good - that's why I'm an anarchist. In my ideal world I do not like the idea of representative democracy because it disempowers the many in favour of a few. Direct democracy is more democratic. Within the Overton window of what is possible, it's also why I prefer PR - a PR government would be that Red/Yellow/Green coalition above; which would be much more left wing. I'm not going to use my one picture to post this graph, but on Yougovs twitter we can see some polling of what the country may have done (with the caveat that hypothetical polling is always problematic) if they didn't have to vote tactically:
At the end of the day I think voting is probably one of the least important aspects of democratic engagement under FPTP. Engage in democracy by emailing your MP. Engage in democracy by signing petitions. Engage in democracy by protesting the government when it passes an unpopular policy. Engage in democracy by, in my words, "bullying" the government to be better. There's a good example going around online now - people in the locker room just asking Keir Starmer why he isn't doing more on Palestine. They aren't being aggressive, they aren't being rude, but they are asking someone in power to do something and it clearly is making him uncomfortable. And that's good - people with power should be uncomfortable when presented with people who don't have power making demands on their power.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
That's interesting. I do love a stat that turns on its head a narrative.
From @Phil (I think) on the previous thread re the Letby case -
"The Guardian claims to have spoken to eight clinicians, seven of them specialising in neonatology who described Evans claims that an air embolism could be introduced in the way claimed during the trials as (I quote the article) nonsensical, “rubbish”, “ridiculous”, “implausible” and “fantastical” in half the cases & the other half relied on a research paper that the /authors/ of that paper said was completely inapplicable.
I am not an expert, but this seems ... concerning to me."
If so, it is odd, isn't it, as @Algakirk has repeatedly pointed out, that none of these clinicians was willing to give evidence for the defence during the trial - assuming any of them were asked.
Why not?
Because they were not asked.
It's difficult to see what point you are making. It's not like giving evidence at the trial would have been a sticking their head above the parapet thing to do. What makes you think saying things to the guardian is a markedly lower risk thing to do than saying things in court? It's much higher risk because if they were talking to the press prior to the latest judgment that leaves them exposed to contempt charges.
I presume that when they're asked to be an expert witness, or were they to be asked, they start looking into the case in detail, as opposed to reacting to one thing presented out of context, and they come to conclusions that the defence don't want to use.
I don't see any basis for any of those suppositions.
The defence case were able to call expert witnesses. The defence case in their appeal, when they made these particular points about air embolisms, were able to call expert witnesses. They never did. Even when they were talking about a topic where an expert witness would be useful.
Either they are the most incompetent defence lawyers in the history of lawyering, or they couldn't find any expert witnesses whose testimony they wanted to put in front of the court.
And those arguments don't apply to the subpostmasters because...?
Many of the sub-postermasters were brow-beaten into pleading guilty rather than fighting. When they fought in an organised manner they won.
Most importantly they were not able to challenge the claim that the IT system was right without paying for a full audit themselves
I remember a dinner table conversation with a very emminent barrister (a family friend) who said in his experience he never came across anyone who pleaded guilty who wasn't. I don't know whether or not he was correct but what he said has crossed my mind many times over the last twenty years since he said it.
Roger, I'm speaking to you as your lawyer. The evidence from the computer system appears watertight. Yes, you say it is wrong, but we have no way of proving that. And what does the Post Office have to gain by lying? If you go to trial, you will spend 8, maybe 10, years in prison. If you plead guilty, you can be out in 18 months. That's the difference between missing one of your kids birthdays and missing their entire childhood. Do the right thing for your kid, plead guilty and put this behind you.
Roger's propensity to take as gospel the dinner party conversation of those prone to MRD syndrome, is impressive.
Though he might be subtly commenting on how wrong the guy was in his certainty ?
I described the comment to my father, who taught philosophy as his career.
He described it as a magnificent example of why philosophical logic was important in real life. An example of a statement that imparts a very different truth to the one the speaker intended.
Also, Roger's dinner party guest is the precise philosophical equivalent of Leon's taxi driver/'expert friend of mine says'.
Though not quite as clear in Roger’s case that his anecdotal person is there to miraculously confirm his every prejudice, aspiration and fear.
Quite right. It is not a point of view that I am interested in persuading anyone of. Just something I've reflected on many times since. It was something I wouldn't have had a view on or even thought about
Thanks @148grss for a really interesting piece. Lots of good detail on the results.
I'm a fellow lefty but firmly a democrat and have reluctantly accepted that our country isn't currently as left wing as I am.
Your language of bullying Labour leaves me wondering - what importance does democracy have in your vision? Do you accept the idea that unless the Green party can sell their policies to enough of the public they shouldn't run the country? And that, acknowledging the massive flaws with FPTP, a very centrist Labour party is the only party with democratic legitimacy right now?
Bullying is the colloquial term I use for organising, campaigning against and lobbying. And the left, unlike the capital rich right, needs to do that from grass roots rather than one rich person getting a meeting with a minister.
And as for democratic legitimacy, part of my argument is that in the UK that legitimacy is weak - the vast majority of people did not vote for this Labour party. If you want a majority of voters you could do so on a coalition of Lab/LD/Green (roughly 52% of the vote), which in my mind would be to the left of this government. You could also find a majority in Lab/Con/Ref - which is what we don't want to happen but if you listen to the likes of Blair is more than likely what this government will do - pander to the right.
I think democracy is good - that's why I'm an anarchist. In my ideal world I do not like the idea of representative democracy because it disempowers the many in favour of a few. Direct democracy is more democratic. Within the Overton window of what is possible, it's also why I prefer PR - a PR government would be that Red/Yellow/Green coalition above; which would be much more left wing. I'm not going to use my one picture to post this graph, but on Yougovs twitter we can see some polling of what the country may have done (with the caveat that hypothetical polling is always problematic) if they didn't have to vote tactically:
At the end of the day I think voting is probably one of the least important aspects of democratic engagement under FPTP. Engage in democracy by emailing your MP. Engage in democracy by signing petitions. Engage in democracy by protesting the government when it passes an unpopular policy. Engage in democracy by, in my words, "bullying" the government to be better. There's a good example going around online now - people in the locker room just asking Keir Starmer why he isn't doing more on Palestine. They aren't being aggressive, they aren't being rude, but they are asking someone in power to do something and it clearly is making him uncomfortable. And that's good - people with power should be uncomfortable when presented with people who don't have power making demands on their power.
Reform are also winners under PR up to 16% on that poll with the Greens yes overtaking the LDs with 13% to 12% for Davey's party. Labour and Tories still first and second but down yet further https://x.com/yougov/status/1807686038191567270
1433 words, @148grss : if you'd've just added 47 words more, you'd be 1480grss
(we shall now have a moment of silence for the days where Cyclefree and I used to argue about whether 1200 words was too long: ydoethur's 1800 word monster killed it)
As for the article itself, I enjoyed it a great deal. I do have one minor complaint: the lack of labelling on the graphs. This is particularly true of the HzBrandenburg graph, which is incomprehensible. I've just looked at his twix https://nitter.poast.org/HzBrandenburg/status/1810652821840105685#m and I still don't know what it says. Seat percentages for each seat, with the X-axis being Labour percentage descending?
Party vote percentage per seat with focus on Labours percentage descending, yes.
Thank you.
If you're interested in other ways of visualising the data you can always tweet at him - the graph I used was only made because someone asked for something that more clearly visualised the relationship between Labour vote share dropping and LD vote share.
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
The households stats capture the effect you describe. It's offset by immigration, with people from overseas more likely to live in larger households.
The amount of utter garbage I've read about what the UK and French elections mean for the US Presidential Election has been ridiculous. Most of the commentary assumes there is direct Republican vs Democrat, or Trump vs Biden parallel. They really don't get how narrow and skewed to the right US politics is, or that other countries have many substantive political parties, or that we aren't all electing Presidents, or that we have very different issues at the fore.
The US is also now the only western democracy where both main parties get over 40% of the vote and no third party gets over 10% of the vote or wins significant seats in parliament. That is also partly why it is so divided down the middle now
The reason (behind the dogma facade) that it was privatised in the first place was that the treasury couldn't afford the massive capital costs to modernise. They haven't gone away you know.
An alternative such as John Lewis model where the customers become partners might be more sustainable. Or a private company where the government own a 31% share, customers own another 30% and no takeovers unless 75% of shareholders agree written into primary legislation might be more sustainable.
I don't understand this comment.
Firstly, if it wanted to - and it would be entirely stupid to do so - HMG could pay £100bn for Thames Water. The UK has a good credit rating. It can print money. It could pay 50x the "right" price and buy it, if it wanted to.
Secondly, the most likely scenario where HMG takes ownership of Thames Water is where it misses an interest payment. At which point, the administrators are called, the shareholders are wiped out, and the bondholders accept - say - 50 cents on the dollar. Thames Water, pre interest payments, is highly profitable. It is just massively over-leveraged. Which is shit for the people who lent money to it. But... so what? The shareholders lose everything, the bond holders lose half their money... and water continues to flow.
Why should bondholders not lose everything ?
Or is big finance deemed more important than small shareholders ?
Because it’s a basic principle of western economics that debt is senior to equity
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
That's interesting. I do love a stat that turns on its head a narrative.
The problem is the stat is bullshit.
Population growth of 14% completely ignoring the fact we have 7 million extra over 50s than we did in the past, so household density has changed, ignores the demand on housing.
Also missing in Eabhal's abuse of statistics is that the household definition was changed in 2011 to reflect "modern living arrangements" so what would previously be considered multiple households is now classed as only one household.
People who are forced to live together as they can't get a home of their own are classed as a single household nowadays, when they might have been more easily classed as separate households in 2001.
AI Summary: The text discusses the historical significance of the United Kingdom, highlighting its evolution from a small island nation to a global power through deep water navigation and industrialization. The UK's financial hub in London played a crucial role in its global influence, but post-World War II, challenges arose with the decline of its empire and competition from other financial centers like New York. The UK's entry into the European Union in the early 1970s revitalized its financial status, but Brexit has since disrupted this stability. The recent election results reflect the economic impact of Brexit, leading to a significant shift in political power. The UK now faces the challenge of redefining its economic strategy and global position, either by joining a new group or undergoing a comprehensive economic reformation. The future of the UK hinges on its ability to adapt to changing global dynamics and secure a strong market for its goods and services.
How do you get an AI summary from a YouTube video?
1. Go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e2R6XBHuQQ 2. See this bit? "In case you've been buried neck deep in US political news, there are some fairly important elections taking place across the globe. For the first country in our little global election coverage, we'll be looking at the United Kingdom...more". Click on the "more" 3. You will then see "Transcript Follow along using the transcript." Click on the "show transcript" button 4. In the upper-right (if you are using a laptop) you will see the transcript. If the transcript has time codes, click on the three dots then "toggle timestamps" to remove them 5. Cut-and-paste the transcript into https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/summarizer and press "summarize". If it's too long, edit it first.
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
The households stats capture the effect you describe. It's offset by immigration, with people from overseas more likely to live in larger households.
But the households stat is a complete distortion, people who are forced to share a house are nowadays classed as one household.
People forced to flat or house share because there's insufficient housing for them to have their own, is not proof we don't need more housing.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
That's interesting. I do love a stat that turns on its head a narrative.
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
Not possible.
Housing demand is insatiable. We all want to live alone or with our families. Once we have achieved that, we all want a second home in the Cotswolds. Demand might start to simmer down at what - 3 dwellings per household?
We also want to live somewhere nice. That’s Edinburgh, or maybe Bath. Perhaps the Isle of Skye, if you’re English and looking to retire. It is not Middlesbrough, where you can buy a 5 bedroom house for £200,000.
So until there are 30 million detached houses in the nice bits, housing demand will always outstrip supply.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
The households stats capture the effect you describe. It's offset by immigration, with people from overseas more likely to live in larger households.
But the households stat is a complete distortion, people who are forced to share a house are nowadays classed as one household.
People forced to flat or house share because there's insufficient housing for them to have their own, is not proof we don't need more housing.
The most obvious stat to illustrate the problem, is the number or %age of empty housing units. IIRC it’s around 1% at the moment, if it were instead 10% we might be on the way to solving housing.
Note that you have to build a lot more houses before that %age starts falling at all, thanks to the pent-up demand you mention. Almost every new build gets sold in advance of completion, because there are people in sub-optimal ‘households’ (new definition) at the moment.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
The households stats capture the effect you describe. It's offset by immigration, with people from overseas more likely to live in larger households.
But the households stat is a complete distortion, people who are forced to share a house are nowadays classed as one household.
People forced to flat or house share because there's insufficient housing for them to have their own, is not proof we don't need more housing.
The most obvious stat to illustrate the problem, is the number or %age of empty housing units. IIRC it’s around 1% at the moment, if it were instead 10% we might be on the way to solving housing.
Note that you have to build a lot more houses before that %age starts falling at all, thanks to the pent-up demand you mention. Almost every new build gets sold in advance of completion, because there are people in sub-optimal ‘households’ (new definition) at the moment.
Exactly.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing.
If there were, people could point to the counties with over 10% vacant properties, but not one in the entire country exists.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
Not possible.
Housing demand is insatiable. We all want to live alone or with our families. Once we have achieved that, we all want a second home in the Cotswolds. Demand might start to simmer down at what - 3 dwellings per household?
We also want to live somewhere nice. That’s Edinburgh, or maybe Bath. Perhaps the Isle of Skye, if you’re English and looking to retire. It is not Middlesbrough, where you can buy a 5 bedroom house for £200,000.
So until there are 30 million detached houses in the nice bits, housing demand will always outstrip supply.
So build 30 million detached houses in the nice bits. Problem solved.
Why shouldn't people be able to live alone or with their families?
"It really helps to start a couple of hundred years ago. If you go back before the industrial revolution .. if you go back before deep water navigation .... the United Kingdom or as it was known 'England' really did not matter all that much. It was a relatively smallish population on a relatively largish island off the coast of Europe and most of the mainland countries especially France had far larger populations and were far more significant.
But when deep water navigation was invented by the Iberians ..." and so it continues.
That's a history out of Peanuts, written by Charlie Brown, for Readers' Digest Simplified Version, for use in the Kindergarten.
But I see he's a "political writer".
I don't see why should we take this person even slightly seriously, if he makes so many basic errors on the most basic of basics. Sorry.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
Not possible.
Housing demand is insatiable. We all want to live alone or with our families. Once we have achieved that, we all want a second home in the Cotswolds. Demand might start to simmer down at what - 3 dwellings per household?
We also want to live somewhere nice. That’s Edinburgh, or maybe Bath. Perhaps the Isle of Skye, if you’re English and looking to retire. It is not Middlesbrough, where you can buy a 5 bedroom house for £200,000.
So until there are 30 million detached houses in the nice bits, housing demand will always outstrip supply.
Except that this isn’t how house prices and demand work in other countries. The ones without housing shortages.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
Housing isn't a commodity like that, though. Because the option is live somewhere or be homeless, and that second one isn't an option. The other issue is private landlords and developers with rent seeking / profit motive thoughts. If a flat is newly built and gets bought by a landlord, that landlord will need it to not only pay the cost of the mortgage but also to make a profit. So the rent is higher than it needs to be, but the landlord has a systemic advantage at buying the property quickly because he is asset rich, which can be financialised into capital. Whereas a first time buyer is not asset or capital rich. A similar issue with developers - if their profits are protected by law (which they are) they can argue that making a large 4-5 bedroom house is more efficient for their profits than building a single occupancy home or flat, and only build those and keep the prices high where only landlords or rich professionals can afford to purchase them.
If the government don't want to build public housing the other option would be to just scrap buy to let, meaning that it is harder to commodify newly bought properties by renting them out. Or by introducing more protections for tenants. Because if you make the market worse for landlords it doesn't destroy the property, it just makes it unprofitable and therefore the landlord will sell - increasing supply that way without the group of people who increase rent seeking behaviour into the market (private landlords).
So, the claim that young people were flocking in their droves to Reform, as repeatedly touted on here by @Leon turns out to be complete and utter rubbish. Why should we be surprised?
That YouGov analysis is an interesting read, according to their analysis Voting Labour positively correlates with level of education and salary, not sure how that aligns with the PB subset
No that wasn't entirely true in 2024, certainly on salary level. This year it was the Tories and LDs who did best with upper middle class ABs relative to the rest of their voters and the LDs did better with middle class C1s than working class C2s and DEs. Labour did almost as well with DEs as ABs and better with DEs than lower middle class C1s.
"Those with a higher household income were more likely to vote Labour than those with a lower household income. A third (32-34%) of those income groups below £50,000 voted for Labour compared to four in ten (40%) of those in household income groups making £50,000 a year or more."
£50k-70k 40% Labour £70k+ 40% Labour
On that chart the LDs did best with those with the highest household income relative to their vote and got their lowest share with those with the lowest income. So LDs vote was more dependent on social class than Labour's vote.
Now yes Labour's vote is less working class and more middle class than it was in the last century now but Labour did better amongst those earning under £20k than middle earners on £20k-£20k.
Yougov has the Tories doing best in terms of middle income earners from £20k to £50k.
Again Yougov too has Reform now a working class party in terms of its support base, indeed closer to what Labour used to be ie doing best poorer and average earners and worst amongst the highest earners. The Greens too do best with the poorest voters but unlike Reform as well with wealthy voters as average earners https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
The households stats capture the effect you describe. It's offset by immigration, with people from overseas more likely to live in larger households.
But the households stat is a complete distortion, people who are forced to share a house are nowadays classed as one household.
People forced to flat or house share because there's insufficient housing for them to have their own, is not proof we don't need more housing.
The most obvious stat to illustrate the problem, is the number or %age of empty housing units. IIRC it’s around 1% at the moment, if it were instead 10% we might be on the way to solving housing.
Note that you have to build a lot more houses before that %age starts falling at all, thanks to the pent-up demand you mention. Almost every new build gets sold in advance of completion, because there are people in sub-optimal ‘households’ (new definition) at the moment.
Exactly.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing.
If there were, people could point to the counties with over 10% vacant properties, but not one in the entire country exists.
Vacant properties are vacant because of probate/family disputes following a death. If 5% say are empty its not the same 5% every year it rotates around, its the on and off flow.
Loath as I am to derail the thread, which way this goes will be pretty consequential in terms of the current government having any serious opposition from the right,
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
That's interesting. I do love a stat that turns on its head a narrative.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
The "sweet spot" would be house prices rising each year, above zero (so no negative equity) but by less than inflation (so becoming more affordable).
Thanks all for the kind words - I know I have a tendency to write long comments here, so thought it best to do a full header to explain my relatively happy feelings from the outcomes of the election.
I can’t stay here long today due to work, but to answer a few questions:
1) I think Bristol Central shows that Greens will mostly be targeting urban seats - whilst we do have a surprising amount of support from otherwise conservative voters in rural areas, that is not where our members are from. On the other hand I know we won those seats without hiding our lefty credentials, so maybe some of those voters are more open to left wing policies than previously thought and just have a tribal hatred of Labour.
2) On tactical voting, there is a graph floating around that I did wonder whether I should include here and write a bit about showing that if people didn’t have to vote tactically the share for Labour would be less, not more. So the tactical anti-Tory vote was already part of why Labour did so well.
3) On policy specific questions - I’m kinda tired of saying here that I disagree with the underlying assumptions of neoliberalism where private investment and balancing the budget are the most important things. When it comes to funding and taxation and such I hold a position much closer to MMT. When it comes to “how do we afford x” that is my position.
4) On NATO specifically - it’s currently a necessary evil and arguably preferable to the alternative (much like my view of the EU).
5) My name comes from the assigned username I was given at university - random numbers and letters that I still remember and therefore use.
Thanks. The nearer a socialist alternative gets to actual power, the more it will be examined.
I think the chances that voters will vote consistently for MMT economics, once it is explained, in a manifesto that could be that of a governing party is about Zero. It will have the appearance of being the mirror image of Reform's economics.
Just suppose for a moment that the chief underlying assumption of what you call 'neoliberalism' is that more people on planet earth should have more access to rising prosperity and stuff like water, food, housing and education and the possibility of living in a reasonably free and peaceful society? And that the ways to achieve it with a deeply imperfect humanity is that everyone should have a vote, and empirically based policies are the chief instrument of change.
This looks madly brilliant. "Miss Merkel; Morte al castello"
OK, this is quite something - Italian TV network Rai2 running a comedy whodunnit 'if Angela Merkel investigated crime in her retirement.' What's next: Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson as odd couple comedy wheeler-dealers? https://x.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1810970026662383805
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP and email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Population does not account for demographics as you damn well know. The over 50 population has grown by 7 million people between 2001 and 2021 which means there are millions more people now living on their own without children than there were in the past. So fewer people living in housing and more housing demand.
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
The households stats capture the effect you describe. It's offset by immigration, with people from overseas more likely to live in larger households.
But the households stat is a complete distortion, people who are forced to share a house are nowadays classed as one household.
People forced to flat or house share because there's insufficient housing for them to have their own, is not proof we don't need more housing.
The most obvious stat to illustrate the problem, is the number or %age of empty housing units. IIRC it’s around 1% at the moment, if it were instead 10% we might be on the way to solving housing.
Note that you have to build a lot more houses before that %age starts falling at all, thanks to the pent-up demand you mention. Almost every new build gets sold in advance of completion, because there are people in sub-optimal ‘households’ (new definition) at the moment.
Exactly.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing.
If there were, people could point to the counties with over 10% vacant properties, but not one in the entire country exists.
Vacant properties are vacant because of probate/family disputes following a death. If 5% say are empty its not the same 5% every year it rotates around, its the on and off flow.
Precisely, because there is a housing shortage.
In healthier countries with sufficient housing the vacant properties exceed 10% typically which allows for rotation as you say but also allows for expensive/poor quality homes to find that nobody is demanding them until they are refurbished or made cheaper.
Sufficient supply means prices come down and/or quality goes up.
Insufficient supply means you can guarantee a tenant no matter how rundown or expensive the property is.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
The "sweet spot" would be house prices rising each year, above zero (so no negative equity) but by less than inflation (so becoming more affordable).
House prices in money terms (as opposed to real terms) can afford to fall 4-5% per year without any serious danger of negative equity on a repayment mortgage. That should be the target.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
Even then, housing prices wouldn't plummet because the people who would buy the properties would likely be private landlords who are incentivised to bring in rent seeking behaviours.
Building Viennese style public housing blocks in every urban area and then making publicly owned bungalows and single occupancy properties in more rural areas would solve most of the issues we're having - we need places for old people to downsize into and young people to live in for their first few years after leaving home, and we need places for people to live when they are working and starting a family. We have more than enough stock of houses for professionals with families within commuting distance of their homes, and far too much stock in the hands of private landlords.
I took a brief break from the proceedings in Parliament today to speak on behalf of residents in Great Barr at the Planning Inquiry in relation to the proposed development at Peak House Farm."
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
The "sweet spot" would be house prices rising each year, above zero (so no negative equity) but by less than inflation (so becoming more affordable).
In an ideal world that would be the best outcome, but also quite slow. Decades of dawdling mean that we really probably need to take a hit by moving faster.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Woah, tyranny of percentages. The fact that X has increased by 14% and Y has increased by 14% does not mean that they have increased by the same absolute amount. To give a made-up example that I have just made up:
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
The "sweet spot" would be house prices rising each year, above zero (so no negative equity) but by less than inflation (so becoming more affordable).
But "more affordable" there is relative not actual affordability, since we have a desire to have next to no inflation. It would take decades of unaffordability combined with 2% inflation to make them affordable.
To reverse the decades of unaffordability we either need a housing crash, or years of high inflation combined with what you said, or years of moderate nominal price falls combined with moderate inflation.
If there's moderate price falls annually then people shouldn't end up in negative equity as they should have had a deposit and be paying down their mortgage annually anyway.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
Even then, housing prices wouldn't plummet because the people who would buy the properties would likely be private landlords who are incentivised to bring in rent seeking behaviours.
Building Viennese style public housing blocks in every urban area and then making publicly owned bungalows and single occupancy properties in more rural areas would solve most of the issues we're having - we need places for old people to downsize into and young people to live in for their first few years after leaving home, and we need places for people to live when they are working and starting a family. We have more than enough stock of houses for professionals with families within commuting distance of their homes, and far too much stock in the hands of private landlords.
Landlords can only guarantee a profit if there's insufficient housing, so they can guarantee a tenant.
Have sufficient housing and then the landlord can be sat with an empty property that they need to pay taxes on, and a mortgage on, but have no tenant to pay the bills. In which case why would the landlord invest?
That's why we should have as a sweet spot 10% of houses vacant at any time, as is the average exceeded in most of Europe, but we don't in even a single county in the entire country.
We don't have "more than enough" of anything, the figures prove that. Name one area with "more than enough" homes.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
The problem is that we don't need the kind of housing developers want to build (four bedroom houses in the green belt) and we do need stuff housing developers don't want to build (Viennese style public housing flats). Sure, some of what people call NIMBYism is that - but a lot of it is also "yes, I want my kids to be able to afford a house here too - but you're not planning to build that kind of house so why should I support you?".
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
Maybe. Maybe not. Things cost what they cost and if prices fall below construction costs, developers will stop building. Social housing can fill the gap except Labour has already ruled out building more council houses on any scale.
I took a brief break from the proceedings in Parliament today to speak on behalf of residents in Great Barr at the Planning Inquiry in relation to the proposed development at Peak House Farm."
LOL
Someone should start a book on how many Lab MPs will be caught opposing development in their own constituencies in the next 12 months.
Thanks all for the kind words - I know I have a tendency to write long comments here, so thought it best to do a full header to explain my relatively happy feelings from the outcomes of the election.
I can’t stay here long today due to work, but to answer a few questions:
1) I think Bristol Central shows that Greens will mostly be targeting urban seats - whilst we do have a surprising amount of support from otherwise conservative voters in rural areas, that is not where our members are from. On the other hand I know we won those seats without hiding our lefty credentials, so maybe some of those voters are more open to left wing policies than previously thought and just have a tribal hatred of Labour.
2) On tactical voting, there is a graph floating around that I did wonder whether I should include here and write a bit about showing that if people didn’t have to vote tactically the share for Labour would be less, not more. So the tactical anti-Tory vote was already part of why Labour did so well.
3) On policy specific questions - I’m kinda tired of saying here that I disagree with the underlying assumptions of neoliberalism where private investment and balancing the budget are the most important things. When it comes to funding and taxation and such I hold a position much closer to MMT. When it comes to “how do we afford x” that is my position.
4) On NATO specifically - it’s currently a necessary evil and arguably preferable to the alternative (much like my view of the EU).
5) My name comes from the assigned username I was given at university - random numbers and letters that I still remember and therefore use.
Thanks. The nearer a socialist alternative gets to actual power, the more it will be examined.
I think the chances that voters will vote consistently for MMT economics, once it is explained, in a manifesto that could be that of a governing party is about Zero. It will have the appearance of being the mirror image of Reform's economics.
Just suppose for a moment that the chief underlying assumption of what you call 'neoliberalism' is that more people on planet earth should have more access to rising prosperity and stuff like water, food, housing and education and the possibility of living in a reasonably free and peaceful society? And that the ways to achieve it with a deeply imperfect humanity is that everyone should have a vote, and empirically based policies are the chief instrument of change.
That isn't the chief underlying assumption of neoliberalism. The chief underlying assumption of neoliberalism is that it is better for things to be in the hands of the private sector and that a rising tide lifts all boats - it is trickle down economics. And it doesn't work. Neoliberalism doesn't really care about democracy - the first real testing ground for neoliberalism was Chile under Pinochet. It was packaged for the Western audience, who were used to things like autonomy and freedom, by suggesting it was a freedom based ideology - but freedom for the market and the capitalist only.
If you are a worker or poor - your freedoms reduced under neoliberalism. Establishment political parties looked more similar, unions were crushed, the social safety net was deconstructed. Multiple states went from owning their own assets and being able to make money off of them and subsidise any losses with taxation and debt, to selling off their assets, losing long term revenue, and creating a layer of rent seekers in between those assets and the public who depend on those services. All it is is a parasitic transference of wealth from the poor to the rich - because to get into that layer of rent seekers you had to have money already to buy them up when they were being sold off (usually on the cheap).
"It really helps to start a couple of hundred years ago. If you go back before the industrial revolution .. if you go back before deep water navigation .... the United Kingdom or as it was known 'England' really did not matter all that much. It was a relatively smallish population on a relatively largish island off the coast of Europe and most of the mainland countries especially France had far larger populations and were far more significant.
But when deep water navigation was invented by the Iberians ..." and so it continues.
That's a history out of Peanuts, written by Charlie Brown, for Readers' Digest Simplified Version, for use in the Kindergarten.
But I see he's a "political writer".
I don't see why should we take this person even slightly seriously, if he makes so many basic errors on the most basic of basics. Sorry.
It's not really clear what you are objecting to. Of course a three line summary of five centuries' history will include some oversimplifications and distortions.
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
The "sweet spot" would be house prices rising each year, above zero (so no negative equity) but by less than inflation (so becoming more affordable).
House prices in money terms (as opposed to real terms) can afford to fall 4-5% per year without any serious danger of negative equity on a repayment mortgage. That should be the target.
I look forward to the Daily Express explaining that point to its readers.
"...the installation of a 2m x 1m skylight on a flat roof to make a dingy flat lighter generated an astonishing fuss. The redoubtable red-trousered resisters approached this small pane of glass – visible only to the occupant – with all the fire and fury required to thwart a nuclear power plant."
Watching the government try and actually make planning easier, is going to be funny to watch.
I wish them all the luck in the World, housing is undoubtedly the UK’s single biggest issue at the moment, but the NIMBY and developer interests are very well entrenched indeed.
Coming down heavy on second home owners, especially ones kept empty for much of the year, is a quicker way to get more housing units onto the market.
Planning is IMHO a relatively small part of the problem, and if they think more relaxed planning is going to resolve the housing crisis by itself, they're in for a disappointment.
The ugly truth is that housebuilding has outpaced population and household growth over the last 20 years, and house prices and rents have gone through the roof regardless.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
That is an outright lie.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
Please don't call me a liar. I'm just posting the stats published by the government.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14% England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
Woah, tyranny of percentages. The fact that X has increased by 14% and Y has increased by 14% does not mean that they have increased by the same absolute amount. To give a made-up example that I have just made up:
If supply gets near demand, then prices will fall.
There seems to be this weird belief across politics that somehow you can build more houses, increasing supply, so that first-time buyers can afford a home, but also not bring down prices across the board. We seem to want to makes houses cheaper for some people, and yet maintain the prices for others. It's nuts. If we ever build enough homes in this country then in real terms at least prices will plummet.
Does the UK have houses that are restricted for first time buyers only so that if a development gets passed then a certain percentage have to be for first time buyers only by law and they can only ever be sold on to first time buyers?
Comments
But I could have told you that.
The claim young people in particular support Reform is entirely without merit, on the numbers. That they also don't support another party is irrelevant.
(we shall now have a moment of silence for the days where Cyclefree and I used to argue about whether 1200 words was too long: ydoethur's 1800 word monster killed it)
As for the article itself, I enjoyed it a great deal. I do have one minor complaint: the lack of labelling on the graphs. This is particularly true of the HzBrandenburg graph, which is incomprehensible. I've just looked at his twix https://nitter.poast.org/HzBrandenburg/status/1810652821840105685#m and I still don't know what it says. Seat percentages for each seat, with the X-axis being Labour percentage descending?
Almost half Tory members want merger with Reform UK, poll suggests, as leadership infighting escalates
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jul/10/conservative-leadership-james-cleverly-reform-uk-labour-keir-starmer
Though notable that those who "strongly oppose" the notion significantly outnumber those who "strongly support" it, by about two to one.
So a bonfire of planning regulations could mean you piss off all the Green-belt NIMBYs for no discernible benefit for your core vote in the cities (even if the counter-factual would be even worse). Politically disastrous.
You would need to build an extreme volume of high density housing in the cities so that you entirely disrupt the market there. That might be possible with council housing as in the 1960s, but even then I assume there isn't enough capacity in the construction sector to make it happen.
Chaos - ex SNP MP wants a 4th leader in 15 months:
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/pressure-mounts-john-swinney-step-33207453#
More Chaos! Half of Tory party members want to merge with Reform UK!
https://x.com/ProfTimBale/status/1810920253330743374
As well as all the time spent travelling from one place to another they also stopped 3 or 4 times in cafes and pubs and did reviews of them together with pictures on their Facebook page. On polling day they were dressed up for the count in a pub before the polls had closed again posted on their Facebook page. We were knocking up until 10 pm.
It was interesting that there were lots of comments about how hard they were working. I don't think any of them would last 5 minutes on a LD team.
Those who have spoken to Sunak describe him as shellshocked by election result, she revealed.
He has been calling all former Tory MPs who lost their seats over weekend, engaging in personal conversations of sometimes more than 10 minutes.
Jul 8, 2024 · 9:23 PM UTC
- See https://nitter.poast.org/PippaCrerar/status/1810424513189814566#m
We forget that politicians are people with emotions and can be traumatised by events. A man who was keenly interested in AI, promoted chess and was paranoid about 15-minute cities, his ministry was silly, reactive, never got to grip with the real problems and (in some cases eg the immigration spike) actually made them worse. So in a sense this was deserved. But I'm not enjoying his discomfort.
There needs to be a compromise that allows, for example, a family living in Wimbledon or Silverstone to get the hell out of Dodge on event week and rent their place to people there for the event - something that’s been happening for decades and causes no issues - while preventing housing in picturesque or seaside towns from being dominated by either short-term lets or second homes only occupied for a few weeks a year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/c1ww68xd63et
It's also hard to be motivated when yout tide is going out. Most of the LibDems won by decent margins - in some cases massive margins (e.g. Chichester), and so there really weren't many places where a red hot campaign would have made any difference for the Tories.
Election day is one of those activities where the reward to effort ratio is incredibly low, yet you have to do it to avoid the feeling you'll have if years of campaigning effort misses on the day by 50.
The truth is that housebuilding has not outpaced population growth and demographic change in the past 20 years, as you damn well know, but you keep repeating this absurd lie.
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient empty housing. Because demographic changes and population growth mean we have insufficient housing.
Incidentally we've had insufficient housing for a long time, even if we did get a small period where housing outpaced demographic changes and population growth, we'd need much more of that and for longer to reverse the housing shortage. Its like reducing the waiting list time from 24 months to 23 months, its simply less bad it doesn't mean problem is solved.
There's a plot of vote vs salary as well as the social grade one. Not saying YouGov are accurate but...
"Those with a higher household income were more likely to vote Labour than those with a lower household income. A third (32-34%) of those income groups below £50,000 voted for Labour compared to four in ten (40%) of those in household income groups making £50,000 a year or more."
£50k-70k 40% Labour
£70k+ 40% Labour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e2R6XBHuQQ
In St A, where I live, we have had a load of luxury flats go up and a number of new housing blocks - all private development, all very pricey. That won't lower rents or house prices.
If people have or want a family, and need a house, why they should not be available?
There isn't anywhere in the entire country with sufficient housing. The idea that some places are the "wrong place to build" is a complete fallacy, there is no wrong place, there is demand and a shortage of supply absolutely everywhere.
All increase in supply lowers prices, if you get a load of luxury flats built then people who currently live in affordable flats can maybe move into the luxury flats which frees up the affordable flats they were living in for someone else, so an increase in supply of luxury flats increases the supply of affordable flats too.
I hope the few remaining conservative mps have the good sense not to put Braverman or Jenrick on the ballot for leader as the membership continues its idiotic choices
With over 4 million votes Reform outpolled the Lib Dems and they are not to be dismissed lightly but the conservatives must not pander to Farage but start on a slow and difficult path to electoral recovery
I'm a fellow lefty but firmly a democrat and have reluctantly accepted that our country isn't currently as left wing as I am.
Your language of bullying Labour leaves me wondering - what importance does democracy have in your vision? Do you accept the idea that unless the Green party can sell their policies to enough of the public they shouldn't run the country? And that, acknowledging the massive flaws with FPTP, a very centrist Labour party is the only party with democratic legitimacy right now?
After 3 minutes of due dilligence I can think of three things
1. A new name
2. Five MP's
3. Nigel Farage.
Of those only one looks to have any value
We’ll miss him even more as a batter.
It might be that they are lying of course. If that's the case, you should send your MP an email and complain.
England population growth, 2001 - 2021: 14%
England households growth, 2001 - 2021: 14%
England dwelling stock growth, 2001 - 2021: 19%
I do hope we aren't going to end up with wind turbines on every hill. Not least because building them on peat is really bad.
Ruining our landscapes when there are better alternatives also seems daft. We should concentrate on offshore, which is far better all round
In reality they would only get some of them.
2001 population: 1,000,000
2001 housing stock: 1,000
2021 discrepancy: 999,000
2021 population: 1,140,000
2021 housing stock: 1,140
2021 discrepancy: 1,138,860
And the households statistic doesn't mean what you imply it does either, as you also damn well know.
So either you're being wilfully ignorant, or lying. I'm not sure which is better.
Let landowners put up turbines on their own land, if it helps with their own energy use, and let energy providers set buy and sell prices according to supply and demand at any given time.
And as for democratic legitimacy, part of my argument is that in the UK that legitimacy is weak - the vast majority of people did not vote for this Labour party. If you want a majority of voters you could do so on a coalition of Lab/LD/Green (roughly 52% of the vote), which in my mind would be to the left of this government. You could also find a majority in Lab/Con/Ref - which is what we don't want to happen but if you listen to the likes of Blair is more than likely what this government will do - pander to the right.
I think democracy is good - that's why I'm an anarchist. In my ideal world I do not like the idea of representative democracy because it disempowers the many in favour of a few. Direct democracy is more democratic. Within the Overton window of what is possible, it's also why I prefer PR - a PR government would be that Red/Yellow/Green coalition above; which would be much more left wing. I'm not going to use my one picture to post this graph, but on Yougovs twitter we can see some polling of what the country may have done (with the caveat that hypothetical polling is always problematic) if they didn't have to vote tactically:
https://x.com/yougov/status/1807686038191567270
The biggest winners? The Greens.
At the end of the day I think voting is probably one of the least important aspects of democratic engagement under FPTP. Engage in democracy by emailing your MP. Engage in democracy by signing petitions. Engage in democracy by protesting the government when it passes an unpopular policy. Engage in democracy by, in my words, "bullying" the government to be better. There's a good example going around online now - people in the locker room just asking Keir Starmer why he isn't doing more on Palestine. They aren't being aggressive, they aren't being rude, but they are asking someone in power to do something and it clearly is making him uncomfortable. And that's good - people with power should be uncomfortable when presented with people who don't have power making demands on their power.
https://x.com/yougov/status/1807686038191567270
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9
Population growth of 14% completely ignoring the fact we have 7 million extra over 50s than we did in the past, so household density has changed, ignores the demand on housing.
Also missing in Eabhal's abuse of statistics is that the household definition was changed in 2011 to reflect "modern living arrangements" so what would previously be considered multiple households is now classed as only one household.
People who are forced to live together as they can't get a home of their own are classed as a single household nowadays, when they might have been more easily classed as separate households in 2001.
2. See this bit? "In case you've been buried neck deep in US political news, there are some fairly important elections taking place across the globe. For the first country in our little global election coverage, we'll be looking at the United Kingdom...more". Click on the "more"
3. You will then see "Transcript Follow along using the transcript." Click on the "show transcript" button
4. In the upper-right (if you are using a laptop) you will see the transcript. If the transcript has time codes, click on the three dots then "toggle timestamps" to remove them
5. Cut-and-paste the transcript into https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/summarizer and press "summarize". If it's too long, edit it first.
People forced to flat or house share because there's insufficient housing for them to have their own, is not proof we don't need more housing.
Housing demand is insatiable. We all want to live alone or with our families. Once we have achieved that, we all want a second home in the Cotswolds. Demand might start to simmer down at what - 3 dwellings per household?
We also want to live somewhere nice. That’s Edinburgh, or maybe Bath. Perhaps the Isle of Skye, if you’re English and looking to retire. It is not Middlesbrough, where you can buy a 5 bedroom house for £200,000.
So until there are 30 million detached houses in the nice bits, housing demand will always outstrip supply.
Note that you have to build a lot more houses before that %age starts falling at all, thanks to the pent-up demand you mention. Almost every new build gets sold in advance of completion, because there are people in sub-optimal ‘households’ (new definition) at the moment.
https://x.com/GlennLuk/status/1810735181042442536
There isn't a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing.
If there were, people could point to the counties with over 10% vacant properties, but not one in the entire country exists.
Why shouldn't people be able to live alone or with their families?
May I also suggest "TechnologyConnections"
https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGT1EvmDJh4
(physically prevents self from posting links to other youtubers otherwise I'll be here all day)
"It really helps to start a couple of hundred years ago. If you go back before the industrial revolution .. if you go back before deep water navigation .... the United Kingdom or as it was known 'England' really did not matter all that much. It was a relatively smallish population on a relatively largish island off the coast of Europe and most of the mainland countries especially France had far larger populations and were far more significant.
But when deep water navigation was invented by the Iberians ..." and so it continues.
That's a history out of Peanuts, written by Charlie Brown, for Readers' Digest Simplified Version, for use in the Kindergarten.
But I see he's a "political writer".
I don't see why should we take this person even slightly seriously, if he makes so many basic errors on the most basic of basics. Sorry.
If the government don't want to build public housing the other option would be to just scrap buy to let, meaning that it is harder to commodify newly bought properties by renting them out. Or by introducing more protections for tenants. Because if you make the market worse for landlords it doesn't destroy the property, it just makes it unprofitable and therefore the landlord will sell - increasing supply that way without the group of people who increase rent seeking behaviour into the market (private landlords).
Now yes Labour's vote is less working class and more middle class than it was in the last century now but Labour did better amongst those earning under £20k than middle earners on £20k-£20k.
Yougov has the Tories doing best in terms of middle income earners from £20k to £50k.
Again Yougov too has Reform now a working class party in terms of its support base, indeed closer to what Labour used to be ie doing best poorer and average earners and worst amongst the highest earners. The Greens too do best with the poorest voters but unlike Reform as well with wealthy voters as average earners
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election
I think the chances that voters will vote consistently for MMT economics, once it is explained, in a manifesto that could be that of a governing party is about Zero. It will have the appearance of being the mirror image of Reform's economics.
Just suppose for a moment that the chief underlying assumption of what you call 'neoliberalism' is that more people on planet earth should have more access to rising prosperity and stuff like water, food, housing and education and the possibility of living in a reasonably free and peaceful society? And that the ways to achieve it with a deeply imperfect humanity is that everyone should have a vote, and empirically based policies are the chief instrument of change.
"Miss Merkel; Morte al castello"
OK, this is quite something - Italian TV network Rai2 running a comedy whodunnit 'if Angela Merkel investigated crime in her retirement.'
What's next: Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson as odd couple comedy wheeler-dealers?
https://x.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1810970026662383805
In healthier countries with sufficient housing the vacant properties exceed 10% typically which allows for rotation as you say but also allows for expensive/poor quality homes to find that nobody is demanding them until they are refurbished or made cheaper.
Sufficient supply means prices come down and/or quality goes up.
Insufficient supply means you can guarantee a tenant no matter how rundown or expensive the property is.
Building Viennese style public housing blocks in every urban area and then making publicly owned bungalows and single occupancy properties in more rural areas would solve most of the issues we're having - we need places for old people to downsize into and young people to live in for their first few years after leaving home, and we need places for people to live when they are working and starting a family. We have more than enough stock of houses for professionals with families within commuting distance of their homes, and far too much stock in the hands of private landlords.
https://x.com/SarahCoombesWB/status/1810716521846444254
"Sarah Coombes for West Bromwich
@SarahCoombesWB
I took a brief break from the proceedings in Parliament today to speak on behalf of residents in Great Barr at the Planning Inquiry in relation to the proposed development at Peak House Farm."
Households: Increase of 3.1 million
Dwellings: Increase of 3.7 million
To reverse the decades of unaffordability we either need a housing crash, or years of high inflation combined with what you said, or years of moderate nominal price falls combined with moderate inflation.
If there's moderate price falls annually then people shouldn't end up in negative equity as they should have had a deposit and be paying down their mortgage annually anyway.
Have sufficient housing and then the landlord can be sat with an empty property that they need to pay taxes on, and a mortgage on, but have no tenant to pay the bills. In which case why would the landlord invest?
That's why we should have as a sweet spot 10% of houses vacant at any time, as is the average exceeded in most of Europe, but we don't in even a single county in the entire country.
We don't have "more than enough" of anything, the figures prove that. Name one area with "more than enough" homes.
Someone should start a book on how many Lab MPs will be caught opposing development in their own constituencies in the next 12 months.
We’ve already caught the new housing minister opposing development in his own back yard from a couple of years ago.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/09/labour-relaxes-homes-planning-rules-housing-minister-nimby/
If you are a worker or poor - your freedoms reduced under neoliberalism. Establishment political parties looked more similar, unions were crushed, the social safety net was deconstructed. Multiple states went from owning their own assets and being able to make money off of them and subsidise any losses with taxation and debt, to selling off their assets, losing long term revenue, and creating a layer of rent seekers in between those assets and the public who depend on those services. All it is is a parasitic transference of wealth from the poor to the rich - because to get into that layer of rent seekers you had to have money already to buy them up when they were being sold off (usually on the cheap).
Lodgers, house shares etc can all be classed as a single household in that data.