All these numbers say to me is that Trump is a really, really unpopular candidate beyond his base. The Democrats had two years to find someone to take him on and destroy him and what he stands for but they didn't. So now they have Harris - sentient, relatively young but also not great. This would not have even been close if the Democrats had acted responsibly and made clear to Biden long ago that he was a one term president.
American politics would be in a much better place if neither Biden nor Trump had tried to continue, made their decisions at the start of the year, and allowed the parties to run regular primaries to battle through their ideas.
Yes, albeit if Haley had won the GOP primaries and Harris had won the Democratic primaries I don't think anyone doubts Haley would have won comfortably.
I do.
Haley would have won Independents by a landslide over Harris, they are only split now as Trump is GOP nominee again
As we've seen in the last couple of weeks, your assumptions aren't certainties.
Well even Trump still leads the current RCP average against Harris, whose 46.1% average would be the lowest voteshare for a Democratic presidential candidate this century. She can still win for as Bloomberg shows she seems to be performing better than Hillary did for example in some key battleground states but she is not that great a candidate otherwise
I remember the days when you said that a Californian liberal like Harris had absolutely no chance against Trump, and they should stick with Biden. Now you're saying "she can still win", so I detect significant movement.
I seem to recall Walter Mondale being mentioned as a guide to how Harris would perform.
More Dukakis who got 45.6% in 1988, about what Harris is now polling
I've just been reading through last night's thread which some have complained about as full of racism. To be honest I don't get it. There was one ambiguous remark by Leon which felt dodgy but otherwise I'm not sure what people are getting at.
Ultimately we cannot ignore the enormous racial/cultural disparities that exist in crime statistics in this country.
Are there enormous racial/cultural disparities in crime stats?
Or is crime typically committed by young people and the crime stats are representative of young person's demographics?
[I don't know the answer to this, genuine question]
The biggest predictor for crime is sex.
Incidentally, this week a 34 year old man was spared jail after being convicted of attacking a woman who rejected his sexual advances. He punched her repeatedly and slashed her across the face, stomach and chest. He did not plead guilty. He also threatened to kill her or have others kill her.
The judge started his sentencing remarks by saying that he did not want to send him to jail. Why not? This sort of behaviour is exactly what needs to lead to a jail sentence. Or are we safe to assume that a man who flies into a rage when a woman rejects his advances will never do it again?
Court delays and a lack of prison places were part of the reason the judge suspended the sentence.
Labour is pledging to halve violence against women and girls. It is going to have to invest in the criminal justice system and prison places if it really means this.
Not necessarily. Labour can revisit white collar and non -violent sentencing to free up prison places.
Custodial sentences for serious domestic abuse are absurdly lenient. If a scumbag assaults his girlfriend give him a lengthy sentence. Twice and he's into double figure year sentences. Three times and throw away the key. The cost saving to the state of these feral bastards not impregnating assaulted girlfriend after assaulted girlfriend would be immense.
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
In 2017 the Returning Officer refused to allow James Airey to speak in Westmorland and Lonsdale when he had come within 777 votes of defeating Tim Farron. That was seen as very bad form and the same candidate was allowed to speak in 2019 after a similar but not as spectacular result.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
I need a key, and a ideally a full list.
Are these rankings? And what is the area - they aren't authorities as there are under 500 of those? If it's completions per year / populations, shouldn't the numbers all be percentages between 0.1% and about 1%? Should not certain demographic and environmental considerations be considered?
Where are Ashfield and Mansfield in rank and numbers?
It's also the result of a reactive policy, not proactive. It is possible to develop clusters and direct development, and perhaps that needs to be in the mix.
Interesting to see Kingston and Richmond amongst the worst authorities, you can't really say it's about land/area shortage with Tower Hamlets managing to hit the needed rate..
Isles of Scilly is a bit of a small edge case like Gibraltar in the EU ref.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
That’s an interesting list, well done for digging out the data. There’s some quite nice areas in the ‘best’ list.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
Would you support a ban on mortgages over 3x the main earner's salary?
No.
I believe in supply and demand.
I would support ramping up supply until prices come down.
Demand is potentially infinite unless you restrict immigration.
That is a ridiculous comment.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
All these numbers say to me is that Trump is a really, really unpopular candidate beyond his base. The Democrats had two years to find someone to take him on and destroy him and what he stands for but they didn't. So now they have Harris - sentient, relatively young but also not great. This would not have even been close if the Democrats had acted responsibly and made clear to Biden long ago that he was a one term president.
American politics would be in a much better place if neither Biden nor Trump had tried to continue, made their decisions at the start of the year, and allowed the parties to run regular primaries to battle through their ideas.
Yes, albeit if Haley had won the GOP primaries and Harris had won the Democratic primaries I don't think anyone doubts Haley would have won comfortably.
I do.
Haley would have won Independents by a landslide over Harris, they are only split now as Trump is GOP nominee again
As we've seen in the last couple of weeks, your assumptions aren't certainties.
Well even Trump still leads the current RCP average against Harris, whose 46.1% average would be the lowest voteshare for a Democratic presidential candidate this century. She can still win for as Bloomberg shows she seems to be performing better than Hillary did for example in some key battleground states but she is not that great a candidate otherwise
I remember the days when you said that a Californian liberal like Harris had absolutely no chance against Trump, and they should stick with Biden. Now you're saying "she can still win", so I detect significant movement.
I seem to recall Walter Mondale being mentioned as a guide to how Harris would perform.
More Dukakis who got 45.6% in 1988, about what Harris is now polling
You are dreaming if you think Dukakis is a valid comparison.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
Would you support a ban on mortgages over 3x the main earner's salary?
No.
I believe in supply and demand.
I would support ramping up supply until prices come down.
Demand is potentially infinite unless you restrict immigration.
That is a ridiculous comment.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
We're debating Bart's utopia where there are no planning constraints and no immigration constraints.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
Would you support a ban on mortgages over 3x the main earner's salary?
No.
I believe in supply and demand.
I would support ramping up supply until prices come down.
Demand is potentially infinite unless you restrict immigration.
That is a ridiculous comment.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
We're debating Bart's utopia where there are no planning constraints and no immigration constraints.
Eh?
I never advocated no immigration constraints.
I have advocated liberal migration rules, but not a free for all.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Is there a link to the source data? Be quite interesting to put it on a map...
Thanks, though. Surprised the Flatlands aren't meeting the target given the amounting of building we've seen.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Interesting list. Could you link to the full table?
All these numbers say to me is that Trump is a really, really unpopular candidate beyond his base. The Democrats had two years to find someone to take him on and destroy him and what he stands for but they didn't. So now they have Harris - sentient, relatively young but also not great. This would not have even been close if the Democrats had acted responsibly and made clear to Biden long ago that he was a one term president.
American politics would be in a much better place if neither Biden nor Trump had tried to continue, made their decisions at the start of the year, and allowed the parties to run regular primaries to battle through their ideas.
Yes, albeit if Haley had won the GOP primaries and Harris had won the Democratic primaries I don't think anyone doubts Haley would have won comfortably.
I do.
Haley would have won Independents by a landslide over Harris, they are only split now as Trump is GOP nominee again
As we've seen in the last couple of weeks, your assumptions aren't certainties.
Well even Trump still leads the current RCP average against Harris, whose 46.1% average would be the lowest voteshare for a Democratic presidential candidate this century. She can still win for as Bloomberg shows she seems to be performing better than Hillary did for example in some key battleground states but she is not that great a candidate otherwise
I remember the days when you said that a Californian liberal like Harris had absolutely no chance against Trump, and they should stick with Biden. Now you're saying "she can still win", so I detect significant movement.
I seem to recall Walter Mondale being mentioned as a guide to how Harris would perform.
More Dukakis who got 45.6% in 1988, about what Harris is now polling
You are dreaming if you think Dukakis is a valid comparison.
Voteshare wise it is, indeed Dukakis led Bush 41 by 55% to 38% after the Democratic convention in July 1988, a poll bounce even Harris would kill for!
The change from 16 to 18 in the age limit has rather muddied the waters and means that two 17 year olds can enjoy a sexual relationship but become PAEDOS if they photo each other in a provocative way. Obviously Mr Edwards is much older (but could still legally, if not morally have an affair with a 16 year old if not in professional care of them).
Although it would be grimly amusing if the British Library got raided and various directors done because their archives include copies of The Sun from the '80s with topless Samantha aged 16 in it.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Is there a link to the source data? Be quite interesting to put it on a map...
Thanks, though. Surprised the Flatlands aren't meeting the target given the amounting of building we've seen.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Interesting. Especially as living in Kingston there has been a large number of (relatively) high rise flats built over the last decade and more under construction.
The list above implies only 100 new homes build per year, while I'd have though some of these new builds had that many flats in a single building.
The change from 16 to 18 in the age limit has rather muddied the waters and means that two 17 year olds can enjoy a sexual relationship but become PAEDOS if they photo each other in a provocative way. Obviously Mr Edwards is much older.
Although it would be grimly amusing if the British Library got raided and various directors done because their archives include copies of The Sun from the '80s with topless Samantha aged 16 in it.
Whatsapp images of under 18s I think, given the circumstances pleading guilty at first hearing was his best option of reducing his sentence as his lawyers would have advised
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
Would you support a ban on mortgages over 3x the main earner's salary?
No.
I believe in supply and demand.
I would support ramping up supply until prices come down.
Demand is potentially infinite unless you restrict immigration.
That is a ridiculous comment.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
We're debating Bart's utopia where there are no planning constraints and no immigration constraints.
Bart, as he's confirmed in another post, has never suggested there should be no constraints on immigration. I am unclear how you came to that conclusion. You seem so overly obsessed with the idea that it's stopping you being able to read what other people actually write.
What do we reckon, suspended sentence for being of previous good character and pleading guilty?
Someone who makes indecent images of children is by definition not of good character. And probably has not been for some time.
But a suspended sentence most likely. Not least because there have been plenty of cases this year of men having done far worse in terms of indecent images of children and being spared jail.
Following up on the "Mea Non Culpa" interview from Liz Truss, here's a rather more straightforward converastion by Matt Forde and Alice Levine with James Bagge, the conservative Independent who took 14% of the vote.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Is there a link to the source data? Be quite interesting to put it on a map...
Thanks, though. Surprised the Flatlands aren't meeting the target given the amounting of building we've seen.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
And that is why “Units?” is the second most common comment I write when correcting homework…
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
This is absolutely fake news, I've been to numerous counts and all candidates are given the opportunity to make a speech after the result is made.
What do we reckon, suspended sentence for being of previous good character and pleading guilty?
Someone who makes indecent images of children is by definition not of good character. And probably has not been for some time.
But a suspended sentence most likely. Not least because there have been plenty of cases this year of men having done far worse in terms of indecent images of children and being spared jail.
“Previous good character” in this sense, means not having a criminal record before these particular offences.
It’s also an offence that has changed somewhat in the digital age, no longer requiring a dark room and a lab full of chemicals.
Also interesting that the photos refer to a chat on WhatsApp. Presumably Edwards was sending rather than receiving the images in question, which also begs the question of how many others might be involved in the same offences? Presumably one of those receiving the messages was the source of the police report.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Interesting. Especially as living in Kingston there has been a large number of (relatively) high rise flats built over the last decade and more under construction.
The list above implies only 100 new homes build per year, while I'd have though some of these new builds had that many flats in a single building.
The list was actually slightly incorrect - based on completions for the 10 years including prior to 2022/23 it is.
#DIV/0! Isles of Scilly 1868 Brighton and Hove 1723 Kingston upon Thames 1672 Adur 1403 Richmond upon Thames 1352 Hastings 1238 Southend-on-Sea 1217 Leicester 1195 Eastbourne 1164 Birmingham
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
Would you support a ban on mortgages over 3x the main earner's salary?
No.
I believe in supply and demand.
I would support ramping up supply until prices come down.
Demand is potentially infinite unless you restrict immigration.
That is a ridiculous comment.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
We're debating Bart's utopia where there are no planning constraints and no immigration constraints.
Eh?
I never advocated no immigration constraints.
I have advocated liberal migration rules, but not a free for all.
Heartwarming to see the residents of Southport clearing up this morning - shouldn't be their job, but they clearly have pride in their community and want to distance themselves from the wingnuts who came visiting last night.
I hope we'll see said wingnuts being tried and sentenced as a priority. To descend on a community in grief with the purpose of racial/religious shit-stirring beggars belief.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
The mother of one of the murdered children has put out a plea for others to stop the violence in Southport.
Unbelievable that a woman who must be suffering unimaginable pain should be put in this position because, in response to male violence against girls, other men decide to be violent against others.
Firstly whites are clearly not the least criminal ethnic group. Black people at 4% of the overall population are 12% of the prison population Alarmingly among under 18s, they are 30% of the prison population. There are several times more Muslims in prison than there are people of all other minority religions combined.
When you actually think about the diversity of the black and Muslim population you might argue lumping them all together is unwise. But it does suggest trouble within SOME black and SOME Muslim communities.
The historic announcement of QEII death will always be associated with someone convicted of underage sex crimes.
If the Beeb follow their TOTP reruns policy then that clip featuring Huw Edwards announcing the death of the Queen will never be shown again on the BBC.
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
Do calm down chaps (or chapesses).
In my experience, it really ISN'T standard operating practice for a normal loser (or even just number 2) to make a speech - though for a losing incumbent not to make a speech would certainly look graceless where I live. And South West Norfolk - what used to be Truss' constituency - last saw an incumbent MP lose their seat in 1959.
But, to the bemusement of all the activists at the count, another losing Tory (junior) Minister stalked off in a huff at one of our local counts. To say the least, his behaviour looked graceless - from a party that once cultivated good manners in public, even from its most manipulating and self-serving MPs.
We'll never know whether Truss is lying, because the returning officer will never disclose whether he ushered everyone off or not - or quietly suggested to Truss that a discrete exit might avoid even more adverse publicity. I imagine Truss supporters will believe she's being conspired against (yet again), Truss mistrusters will believe she's creating excuses - but most people will be a great deal more interested in the effect of her policies on the national (and SW Norfolk) wellbeing.
What do we reckon, suspended sentence for being of previous good character and pleading guilty?
Someone who makes indecent images of children is by definition not of good character. And probably has not been for some time.
But a suspended sentence most likely. Not least because there have been plenty of cases this year of men having done far worse in terms of indecent images of children and being spared jail.
“Makes” in UK legal speak here (usually) means “displays on their computer”, or even just “has a copy on a computer they were responsible for”.
The female police chief who was prosecuting for “making” a few years ago had a video sent to her on WhatsApp by a relative. She was clearly not responsible for making the original video, but that was the law she was prosecuted for.
We don’t (yet) know the details of the Edwards case, so it’s difficult to make any kind of judgement from the outside. Presumably more details will emerge once he’s been sentenced.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
Would you support a ban on mortgages over 3x the main earner's salary?
No.
I believe in supply and demand.
I would support ramping up supply until prices come down.
Demand is potentially infinite unless you restrict immigration.
That is a ridiculous comment.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
We're debating Bart's utopia where there are no planning constraints and no immigration constraints.
Eh?
I never advocated no immigration constraints.
I have advocated liberal migration rules, but not a free for all.
More liberal than they are now?
I supported Boris liberalising migration rules (while equalising them for countries of origin so we don't discriminate).
I don't have any objection to current migration rules or rates.
If anything though I'd tighten up on rules allowing unskilled, low wage migrants and liberalise rules for higher skilled, higher wage migrants.
What do we reckon, suspended sentence for being of previous good character and pleading guilty?
Someone who makes indecent images of children is by definition not of good character. And probably has not been for some time.
But a suspended sentence most likely. Not least because there have been plenty of cases this year of men having done far worse in terms of indecent images of children and being spared jail.
The problem with your argument is that the definition of making indecent images of children means any photo on your phone qualifies as it's a copy of the original...
Not that I'm disagreeing with you statement but it's a crime that was far harder to commit when that law was originally written...
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
Not prices in aggregate coming down, but your own house becoming unsellable.
So what? Free market.
Just cut the price if competition is driving the cost of yours down, same as any other sector. Competition lowering prices is a good thing, not a bad one.
I fear you're missing the point. I'm not talkiing about competition lowering the value of your house as part of a fall in overall prices, but someone deliberately making your house unsellable in order to acquire it for a song.
So, for example, someone might make their home into a halfway house for young offenders?
I once trolled a local facebook group who were in Full Nimby Froth mode about a plan for an old peoples home on a disused allotment; telling them that due to the objections the scheme had been cancelled and a hostel for newly released sex offenders would be built instead (said disused allotment was next to the Scout Hut).
It was epic.
A colleg said that I shouldn't be allowed on social media (when he finally stopped laughing).
My best troll was selling an MP on the idea of growing peanuts in Africa to use for making biofuel.
#DIV/0! City of London 5314 Gosport 3903 Portsmouth 3885 Richmond upon Thames 2492 Southend-on-Sea 1952 Plymouth 1878 Eastbourne 1758 Norwich 1729 Erewash 1707 Kingston upon Thames
-----
145 Rushcliffe 143 South Holland 143 Vale of White Horse 141 Ribble Valley 138 Milton Keynes 135 Tewkesbury 125 Harborough 121 Mid Suffolk 116 South Derbyshire 112 Stratford-on-Avon
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
Not really.
I support liberal everything that is not forbidden is legal laws.
We should have rules on what you can or can't do, then everything you want to do within the law should be automatically allowed by you choosing to do it.
We should not have everything that is not permitted is forbidden rules that require some busybody to approve or decline your actions.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
The two laws boil done to
Building regulations - is the building safe to live in Planning - can I build a four bedroom house on that site.
While I don't agree with Bart on point 2 I don't see the issue with Bart's viewpoint as the 2 items serve very different purposes and Bart isn't arguing about quality control.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I don't see any contradiction.
Planning rules relate, mostly, to how the thing looks, impact on others (sight-lines, overlooking/ shadowing etc).
Building regulations are about ensuring that buildings don't fall down and are reasonably well insulated, on the whole.
I'm not with Bart on the planning abolition, although I would support reform,* but his position of abolish planning but keep building regs is perfectly logically consistent.
*An oddity is that we had planning permission rejected for a rear extension that margially cut the 45 degree angle from a neighbour's window, even though they had no objection (it's a slightly oddly positioned window - there was no real impact from our extension) but had a side extension with much greater impact on our other neighbours granted (they also had no objection, but gives us a degree of overlooking on to their land and shades some of their side windows - still much greater distance than common between new builds so I guess that's why it got through)
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
The two laws boil done to
Building regulations - is the building safe to live in Planning - can I build a four bedroom house on that site.
While I don't agree with Bart on point 2 I don't see the issue with it as the 2 items serve very different purposes...
Currently you need building regulations approval in advance. Bart seems to be saying we should do away with this and just let builders get on with it.
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
In 2017 the Returning Officer refused to allow James Airey to speak in Westmorland and Lonsdale when he had come within 777 votes of defeating Tim Farron. That was seen as very bad form and the same candidate was allowed to speak in 2019 after a similar but not as spectacular result.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
It's not a question of a partisan returning officer - it is just the convention in that constituency that they only do a winner's speech. MattW is suggesting that Liz Truss should have overturned that convention, purely to make him and his fellow posters look less foolish it would appear.
Firstly whites are clearly not the least criminal ethnic group. Black people at 4% of the overall population are 12% of the prison population Alarmingly among under 18s, they are 30% of the prison population. There are several times more Muslims in prison than there are people of all other minority religions combined.
When you actually think about the diversity of the black and Muslim population you might argue lumping them all together is unwise. But it does suggest trouble within SOME black and SOME Muslim communities.
"There are several times more Muslims in prison than there are people of all other minority religions combined."
Well Muslims dominate the minority religions, so this doesn't tell us much.
What proportion of the prison population is Muslim and what proportion of the general population in England and Wales is?
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
Not prices in aggregate coming down, but your own house becoming unsellable.
So what? Free market.
Just cut the price if competition is driving the cost of yours down, same as any other sector. Competition lowering prices is a good thing, not a bad one.
I fear you're missing the point. I'm not talkiing about competition lowering the value of your house as part of a fall in overall prices, but someone deliberately making your house unsellable in order to acquire it for a song.
So, for example, someone might make their home into a halfway house for young offenders?
I once trolled a local facebook group who were in Full Nimby Froth mode about a plan for an old peoples home on a disused allotment; telling them that due to the objections the scheme had been cancelled and a hostel for newly released sex offenders would be built instead (said disused allotment was next to the Scout Hut).
It was epic.
A colleg said that I shouldn't be allowed on social media (when he finally stopped laughing).
My best troll was selling an MP on the idea of growing peanuts in Africa to use for making biofuel.
Wasn’t that the wheeze that the UK govenment lost £billions on in the 50s?
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
In 2017 the Returning Officer refused to allow James Airey to speak in Westmorland and Lonsdale when he had come within 777 votes of defeating Tim Farron. That was seen as very bad form and the same candidate was allowed to speak in 2019 after a similar but not as spectacular result.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
It's not a question of a partisan returning officer - it is just the convention in that constituency that they only do a winner's speech. MattW is suggesting that Liz Truss should have overturned that convention, purely to make him and his fellow posters look less foolish it would appear.
Have we actually had it confirmed that it is the convention in that constituency, or might Truss be telling porkies?
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
No it wouldn't mean doubling population, since if we increase the supply of housing and demand scales upwards, then housing pressure would not be alleviated at all.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
Labour have decided to level up the north with huge increase in house building. But they could of done that without reducing the housing targets where they are most needed?
Firstly whites are clearly not the least criminal ethnic group. Black people at 4% of the overall population are 12% of the prison population Alarmingly among under 18s, they are 30% of the prison population. There are several times more Muslims in prison than there are people of all other minority religions combined.
When you actually think about the diversity of the black and Muslim population you might argue lumping them all together is unwise. But it does suggest trouble within SOME black and SOME Muslim communities.
Would be interesting to see whether that survives controlling for deprivation or other measures of family SES.
(If it does not, there's still the question of why there are ethnic group differences in SES)
What do we reckon, suspended sentence for being of previous good character and pleading guilty?
Someone who makes indecent images of children is by definition not of good character. And probably has not been for some time.
But a suspended sentence most likely. Not least because there have been plenty of cases this year of men having done far worse in terms of indecent images of children and being spared jail.
The problem with your argument is that the definition of making indecent images of children means any photo on your phone qualifies as it's a copy of the original...
Not that I'm disagreeing with you statement but it's a crime that was far harder to commit when that law was originally written...
There was also a crime of "inciting distribution of indecent images" which was used when they couldn't find any on said persons computer but their credit card details were on the books of a company that was putting them on the internet behind a paywall.
Not heard that one used for a while but there was a big case about 20 years ago where thousands got their collar felt (and many committed suicide) after the US authorities shut down a website and passed the credit card details of (alleged) customers to UK Knacker.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Yes - just got to that.
The numbers provided represent "Dwellings built per X people each year on average."
So Milton Keynes is "one dwelling annually on average built per 165 people", or in the terms I suggested 0.6%.
And we are perhaps ignoring things such as conversions to HMO etc.
Ashfield is 134 = 0.75% and Mansfield is 112 = 0.9%, so we are pulling our weight and more on this data.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
No it wouldn't mean doubling population, since if we increase the supply of housing and demand scales upwards, then housing pressure would not be alleviated at all.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
It's close enough. If you double the amount of housing with 10% vacant then you have the best part of double the population.
Labour have decided to level up the north with huge increase in house building. But they could of done that without reducing the housing targets where they are most needed?
They have reduced a housing target that wasn't even remotely close to being achieved. If the previous Government had hit their target and Labour had then cut theirs you would have a point.
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Colwich is where the line to stoke on trent goes of and the WCML goes down to 2 track north of it through Shugborough Tunnel.
All it carries is two of the Euston to Manchesters per hour (down trains thereof also conflict with up trains from Stafford at Colwich).
If the "stone avoiding line" had a route back to the West Coast Main Line north of Stafford, you might have a point, but it dosent south of Crewe. Although the Stoke to Crewe Line being electrified in the last few years helps.
It carries far more than 2tph at peak periods. More like 8 (or four each way).
Also, if there were no crossover at Stone it couldn't carry trains to Stoke.
I agree it would be better if it were grade separated, but your earlier claim of 'six tracks going down to two tracks' was simply daft.
Eh?
You can't go Colwich - Stone Avoiding line - back to WCML (before Crewe and slowly at any rate)
It is basically a branch.
The WCML is four track, then two HS2 tracks will join it a few miles before it becomes 2 track through Shugborough Tunnel.
As to 4TPH in the peak service, to Stoke avoiding Stafford is still 2PH (3 tph from Manchester to Euton, but one goes via Wilmslow and Crewe).
There is an extra Manchester to Euston via Stoke in the morning peak, but that goes via Stafford and Birmingham, same as all the Crosscountries (as did the London Midland Euston to Crewe via Stafford and Stoke before they decided to bypass Stoke and send it fast from Stafford to Crewe).
Rail planning is one of those areas in which it is quite astonishing how many really quite knowledgeable people there are on here.
Although they don't include that particular poster, who not only doesn't know the track layout but describes a line as 'basically a branch' before noting it takes fast services...
Yeah, what the fuck would I know after a lifetime spent in the industry.
Suggest you look up some easy to access publically available resources like then one below before talking out of the back of your head.
Or I could do what I do fairly frequently, living only a few miles away, and go and look at the track...
Given your very strange pronouncements on the MML and HS2 I'm inclined to say the answer to your first question is 'not a lot,' if I'm honest.
Looking at the track from the ground isn't particularly helpful in understanding how a complex layout like Colwich works, nor the usefulness and traffic density of the various routes from it.
A look at Whitehouse Junction (where the two tracks through Shugborough Tunnel widen back to four) and Hixon (on what you call the Stone Avoiding Line (actually it is no such thing - it passes through Stone Station on seaparate tracks where the platforms were demolished in the '60s)) on real time trains will show you that all bar a very small number of the large number of passenger and freight trains passing through Colwich Junction run through the two track bottleneck that is Shugborough Tunnel.
The site will show you that of the 27 trains that run south from or two Colwich Junction, passing either Whitehouse Jct or Hixon between 9 AM and 10 AM:
* 23 pass through Shugborough Tunnel and Whitehouse Junction between 9AM and 10AM.
* Just 4 pass through Hixon on your so called Stone avoiding Line between 9AM and 10AM .
Shall we run through how this conversation started?
You complained that with HS2 coming into the WCML at Lichfield (actually Handsacre) there would be a major bottleneck where 'six tracks go into two' at Shugborough.
I pointed out that there is a double track line from Colwich to Stone so this statement was incorrect.
You then said that didn't count as it only had two trains per hour on it.
I pointed out this was also not correct as there were more than this (up to four each way) at peak times (and I was using RealTimeTrains for data - feel free to expand it to the whole day) which you rather grudgingly accepted although you now seem to have rowed back on that.
You then said it only took a couple of expresses per hour and was, in effect, a branch line, which I pointed out was a logical contradiction.
You then got very agitated but never actually managed to explain why that wasn't a contradiction.
On your substantive point, nobody disputes the junctions are badly laid out, causing restrictions on traffic, and need sorting if the line's to be used properly. That's been a constant thing since it was electrified (arguably before). Grade separated junctions easily accessed for traffic going both ways would be needed and are not as simple as waving a wand. And that also applies wherever the DfT run HS2 to.
But the line *is* there and therefore your claim that six tracks go into two was mathematically and factually incorrect. It's your stubborn refusal to accept this that's getting you into the tangle you seem to be in.
Whether six tracks going into four is much better is another question. I'd say not, but then, I've always advocated building HS2 right the way to Manchester and Leeds. If the government are too cheeseparing to do that then at least up to Crewe would be far better than Handsacre.
To give my qualifications, I am a lifelong rail enthusiast and used to drive steam trains on a heritage railway.
Having a couple of expresses per hour on a branch line is not in any way a logical contradiction. By describing it as such you are demonstrating your lack of knowledge.
A branch line is any line that is connected to a main line and has its own services. It is engineered for lower speeds than a main line. There may also be other restrictions that you wouldn't find on a main line, e.g. weight and loading gauge.
An express is any train that goes from its origin to its destination with few or no stops.
So if a line coming off the main line at A runs to point B with 10 intermediate stops and is engineered for top speeds of, say, 50mph, it is a branch line. If there is a train originating at A and running to B without stopping at the intermediate stops, it is an express. Indeed, an express train from London to B would run along the branch line. It doesn't stop the express being an express, nor does it stop the branch line being a branch line.
I love your suggestion that going and looking at the track means you know what you are talking about. I've looked at a hospital. That doesn't make me a medical expert.
If you were talking to a group of rail enthusiasts with the posts you have made here, you would be quietly advised to stop making a fool of yourself.
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
In 2017 the Returning Officer refused to allow James Airey to speak in Westmorland and Lonsdale when he had come within 777 votes of defeating Tim Farron. That was seen as very bad form and the same candidate was allowed to speak in 2019 after a similar but not as spectacular result.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
It's not a question of a partisan returning officer - it is just the convention in that constituency that they only do a winner's speech. MattW is suggesting that Liz Truss should have overturned that convention, purely to make him and his fellow posters look less foolish it would appear.
TBF, could anything have humiliated Truss than having to admit she was in a McDonald’s?
Possibly a Pizza Hut eating a Hawaiian, but otherwise…
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Yes - just got to that.
The numbers provided represent "Dwellings built per X people each year on average."
So Milton Keynes is "one dwelling annually on average built per 165 people", or in the terms I suggested 0.6%.
And we are perhaps ignoring things such as conversions to HMO etc.
Ashfield is 134 = 0.75% and Mansfield is 112 = 0.9%, so we are pulling our weight and more on this data.
Its better than elsewhere but only pulling weight on the pathetically low 300k housing target though.
Given our chronic housing shortage, population growth and demographic growth we should be aiming for a minimum of 1 million new builds per annum. Which after a decade would still leave us with a serious housing shortage, just not as chronic as today.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
The two laws boil done to
Building regulations - is the building safe to live in Planning - can I build a four bedroom house on that site.
While I don't agree with Bart on point 2 I don't see the issue with it as the 2 items serve very different purposes...
Currently you need building regulations approval in advance. Bart seems to be saying we should do away with this and just let builders get on with it.
Um the first stage of building regulation approval is that you've specified the correct equipment, i.e. the foundations will be of the correct depth, the lintels can take the weight of what is being placed above it.
Those are very expensive mistake to get wrong if you need to rectify later.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
No it wouldn't mean doubling population, since if we increase the supply of housing and demand scales upwards, then housing pressure would not be alleviated at all.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
It's close enough. If you double the amount of housing with 10% vacant then you have the best part of double the population.
Not necessarily. You could simply have fewer people per dwelling, less overcrowding, HMOs, and adult kids living with their parents.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
No it wouldn't mean doubling population, since if we increase the supply of housing and demand scales upwards, then housing pressure would not be alleviated at all.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
It's close enough. If you double the amount of housing with 10% vacant then you have the best part of double the population.
A minimum of 10% vacant, not a maximum.
And I've not advocated doubling housing, I've consistently advocated 10 million new homes for starters (which would bring us roughly in parity with the number of homes France has, for the same population as us).
Once we get closer to that, would reassess.
Plus as Sandpit says, alleviating our housing shortage would enable people in overcrowded homes to move into a home of their own. Everyone who wants one should be able to get a home of their own.
Or people could with sufficient construction have second homes. Which there's nothing wrong with, if there's no shortage for people's first homes.
“The court heard that Edwards had been involved in online chat with an adult man on WhatsApp between Dec 2020 and Aug 2021, who sent him 377 sexual images, of which 41 were indecent images of children.
“The bulk of these, 36, were sent during a two-month period.
“On Feb 2 2021 the male asked whether what he was sending was too young, in response to which Edwards told him not to send any underage images, the court heard.
“The indecent images that were sent included seven category A, the worst, 12 category B, and 22 category C.
“Of the category A images, the estimated age of most of the children was between 13 and 15, but one was age between seven and nine, the court was told.”
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Yes - just got to that.
The numbers provided represent "Dwellings built per X people each year on average."
So Milton Keynes is "one dwelling annually on average built per 165 people", or in the terms I suggested 0.6%.
And we are perhaps ignoring things such as conversions to HMO etc.
Ashfield is 134 = 0.75% and Mansfield is 112 = 0.9%, so we are pulling our weight and more on this data.
Its better than elsewhere but only pulling weight on the pathetically low 300k housing target though.
Given our chronic housing shortage, population growth and demographic growth we should be aiming for a minimum of 1 million new builds per annum. Which after a decade would still leave us with a serious housing shortage, just not as chronic as today.
Bad news for @MattW, Ashfield and Mansfield aren't hitting the required rate. Bassetlaw is though.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
The two laws boil done to
Building regulations - is the building safe to live in Planning - can I build a four bedroom house on that site.
While I don't agree with Bart on point 2 I don't see the issue with it as the 2 items serve very different purposes...
Currently you need building regulations approval in advance. Bart seems to be saying we should do away with this and just let builders get on with it.
Yes, regulation approval/certification in the form of inspections or requiring a qualified individual certifies that the work meets requirements is reasonable - but should be a binary yes/no sign off, with remedial work to be done if no. No judgements as to whether it "suits the area" or anything, simply "is this safe?"
If someone is qualified and knows what they're doing they should not need to ask every single time before they start work to check they're still doing the right thing, they should do the right thing that they're qualified to do then be signed off at the relevant point (or sign it off themselves where appropriate) that it has been done to the requisite standards.
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Colwich is where the line to stoke on trent goes of and the WCML goes down to 2 track north of it through Shugborough Tunnel.
All it carries is two of the Euston to Manchesters per hour (down trains thereof also conflict with up trains from Stafford at Colwich).
If the "stone avoiding line" had a route back to the West Coast Main Line north of Stafford, you might have a point, but it dosent south of Crewe. Although the Stoke to Crewe Line being electrified in the last few years helps.
It carries far more than 2tph at peak periods. More like 8 (or four each way).
Also, if there were no crossover at Stone it couldn't carry trains to Stoke.
I agree it would be better if it were grade separated, but your earlier claim of 'six tracks going down to two tracks' was simply daft.
Eh?
You can't go Colwich - Stone Avoiding line - back to WCML (before Crewe and slowly at any rate)
It is basically a branch.
The WCML is four track, then two HS2 tracks will join it a few miles before it becomes 2 track through Shugborough Tunnel.
As to 4TPH in the peak service, to Stoke avoiding Stafford is still 2PH (3 tph from Manchester to Euton, but one goes via Wilmslow and Crewe).
There is an extra Manchester to Euston via Stoke in the morning peak, but that goes via Stafford and Birmingham, same as all the Crosscountries (as did the London Midland Euston to Crewe via Stafford and Stoke before they decided to bypass Stoke and send it fast from Stafford to Crewe).
Rail planning is one of those areas in which it is quite astonishing how many really quite knowledgeable people there are on here.
Although they don't include that particular poster, who not only doesn't know the track layout but describes a line as 'basically a branch' before noting it takes fast services...
Yeah, what the fuck would I know after a lifetime spent in the industry.
Suggest you look up some easy to access publically available resources like then one below before talking out of the back of your head.
Or I could do what I do fairly frequently, living only a few miles away, and go and look at the track...
Given your very strange pronouncements on the MML and HS2 I'm inclined to say the answer to your first question is 'not a lot,' if I'm honest.
Looking at the track from the ground isn't particularly helpful in understanding how a complex layout like Colwich works, nor the usefulness and traffic density of the various routes from it.
A look at Whitehouse Junction (where the two tracks through Shugborough Tunnel widen back to four) and Hixon (on what you call the Stone Avoiding Line (actually it is no such thing - it passes through Stone Station on seaparate tracks where the platforms were demolished in the '60s)) on real time trains will show you that all bar a very small number of the large number of passenger and freight trains passing through Colwich Junction run through the two track bottleneck that is Shugborough Tunnel.
The site will show you that of the 27 trains that run south from or two Colwich Junction, passing either Whitehouse Jct or Hixon between 9 AM and 10 AM:
* 23 pass through Shugborough Tunnel and Whitehouse Junction between 9AM and 10AM.
* Just 4 pass through Hixon on your so called Stone avoiding Line between 9AM and 10AM .
Shall we run through how this conversation started?
You complained that with HS2 coming into the WCML at Lichfield (actually Handsacre) there would be a major bottleneck where 'six tracks go into two' at Shugborough.
I pointed out that there is a double track line from Colwich to Stone so this statement was incorrect.
You then said that didn't count as it only had two trains per hour on it.
I pointed out this was also not correct as there were more than this (up to four each way) at peak times (and I was using RealTimeTrains for data - feel free to expand it to the whole day) which you rather grudgingly accepted although you now seem to have rowed back on that.
You then said it only took a couple of expresses per hour and was, in effect, a branch line, which I pointed out was a logical contradiction.
You then got very agitated but never actually managed to explain why that wasn't a contradiction.
On your substantive point, nobody disputes the junctions are badly laid out, causing restrictions on traffic, and need sorting if the line's to be used properly. That's been a constant thing since it was electrified (arguably before). Grade separated junctions easily accessed for traffic going both ways would be needed and are not as simple as waving a wand. And that also applies wherever the DfT run HS2 to.
But the line *is* there and therefore your claim that six tracks go into two was mathematically and factually incorrect. It's your stubborn refusal to accept this that's getting you into the tangle you seem to be in.
Whether six tracks going into four is much better is another question. I'd say not, but then, I've always advocated building HS2 right the way to Manchester and Leeds. If the government are too cheeseparing to do that then at least up to Crewe would be far better than Handsacre.
To give my qualifications, I am a lifelong rail enthusiast and used to drive steam trains on a heritage railway.
Having a couple of expresses per hour on a branch line is not in any way a logical contradiction. By describing it as such you are demonstrating your lack of knowledge.
A branch line is any line that is connected to a main line and has its own services. It is engineered for lower speeds than a main line. There may also be other restrictions that you wouldn't find on a main line, e.g. weight and loading gauge.
An express is any train that goes from its origin to its destination with few or no stops.
So if a line coming off the main line at A runs to point B with 10 intermediate stops and is engineered for top speeds of, say, 50mph, it is a branch line. If there is a train originating at A and running to B without stopping at the intermediate stops, it is an express. Indeed, an express train from London to B would run along the branch line. It doesn't stop the express being an express, nor does it stop the branch line being a branch line.
I love your suggestion that going and looking at the track means you know what you are talking about. I've looked at a hospital. That doesn't make me a medical expert.
If you were talking to a group of rail enthusiasts with the posts you have made here, you would be quietly advised to stop making a fool of yourself.
A local example is line from Norton Bridge to Stone, this is officially tbe "Norton Bridge Branch" but is not a dead end branch, nor particularly slow (especially since Norton Bridge grade separation) and carries more services (including the Crosscountry Intercities) than the line via Hixon.
However, the description is correct because it branches off the WCML.
Symilarly, the lines from Brighton to Eastbourne and Hastings and Brighton to Portsmouth and Southampton are designated up and down east and west branch on leaving Brighton.
And the Guilford Via Cobham line leaving the SWML at Surbiton is designated throughout as the up and down Cobham Branch.
On the making indecent images charges, we need to remember that such laws were in general a godawful mess in the way they were framed, and had many disastrous unintended consequences.
On the similar tendency "extreme pornography" laws, here's the famous Tiger Porn case of an innocent man who was locked up on remand for 6 months, and denied access to his 1 year old child for a year, all because of the bad law. an unprofessional prosecution, and general prejudice. He also had to leave his home town after threats and abuse.
We will never know how many miscarriages of justice there were, how many innocent people killed themselves, how many marriages were destroyed, and all the rest.
Andrew Holland, 51, suffered a heart attack, received hate mail and was targeted by vigilantes after being charged with possessing two videos that he was sent by friends as a joke.
He said he viewed one for just six seconds but the charges led to him being the subject of “widespread ridicule” and being mistakenly labelled a paedophile. After more than six months on bail, the charge of possession of an extreme pornographic image was dropped in December 2009 when prosecutors realised that the “animal” was a man dressed up in a tiger suit.
The Crown Prosecution Service said it only recognised that it was a man when the tiger was heard on the soundtrack saying “that’s grrrrrrreat”, like Tony the Tiger from Frosties’ breakfast cereal adverts. ... “I lost my job, I had to move and I ended up having a heart attack with all the stress of it,” he said. “People were ringing me in the middle of the night. Three young lads turned up at my door and were calling me everything. I was threatened on more than one occasion.”
The offence of possession of an extreme pornographic image was introduced in 2008 and has resulted in more than 5,500 prosecutions, the majority for clips of bestiality. Ministers had predicted that there would be just 30 cases a year.
Under the law, a person can be prosecuted for possession of a pornographic image labelled “extreme” if it shows necrophilia or bestiality, threatens someone’s life or could cause serious injury to anus, breasts or genitals. In addition, the law applies to “grossly offensive” or “disgusting” images – a highly subjective test
Just bought some stuff at the local supermarket and got my first Charles fiver. Bit of a weird moment getting a note without the Queen on it.
My first King Charles note is on the bookshelf behind me. I'd not even noticed until the woman in the fish and chip shop pointed it out, so I swapped it back for one of his mum's.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
You're a free market guy, right? If people prioritise having a nice home over foreign holidays, then that's the way it is.
What I would say is, the Bank of England failed us massively by not hiking rates in the late 90s and 2000s as prices took off. And they failed us again by leaving them at 0 for over a decade post the GFC.
I've got nothing against people choosing a nice home, if that's their choice.
The problem is that its not nice homes that have become more expensive or demanded, its all homes, because supply has failed to keep up with demand. Because we do not have a free market.
I support a free market yes. Anyone who wants to build a home should have the liberty to do so, without asking for permission from anyone else. That will solve the problem.
What we have today is not a free market. When curtain twitching nobodies can object to houses being constructed on land they don't own and has nothing to do with them, it is not a free market.
Based on your comments yesterday, I've revised my hypothetical:
If the Donald Trump of Warrington came along and bought the house next to yours and starting constructing a four-storey apartment building covering the entire plot, thinking that this would make the surrounding houses worthless so he could buy them up to complete his scheme, would you be right behind him?
How much clearer can I be?
Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him.
If prices come down, then that makes housing more affordable, you're saying that like its a bad thing.
What if the only way to supply his house with gas, electricity and water is put a huge generator and turbine and watertank on the public pavement outside your house.
Weird question, then they would need to come up with a new design to put their generator etc on their own land, not other people's land.
Whatever you want to do with your own land should be up to you. Putting it on other people's land is not OK.
So they could have a wind turbine and generator running 24x7 next door to you and water deliveries all day and night and that is ok with you. That is a degree of friendly neighbourliness that is not usually present.
Edit: in fact not only is it usually not present in other people I don't believe it is present in you. You would not like it.
Building requires externalities, which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge.
So long as they don't create noise pollution or break other rules then yes I couldn't care less.
If its generating noise pollution then they would have to shut it down at appropriate hours or fix it remedially.
That has nothing to do with planning though.
Noise pollution rules regulate what you can and cannot do because it affects neighbours. Same as "right to light". They are related to planning as they are all regulations that allow people, yourself for example, to protect yourself, or rather, to have a say in what someone else does. You cannot say "build anywhere" and then say "oh but noise pollution..."
Of course you can!
If a pre-existing pub that is already near you gets a new Manager who decides to put on loud music at night and the patrons make loud noises at night would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If a pre-existing shop that is near you starts getting deliveries at night and the staff are loud would you say "oh well, the building is already there, so there's nothing I can do" or would you make a noise complaint?
If someone is creating noise there are avenues to deal with that. It does not require planning.
You are, untypically, but perhaps wilfully missing the point.
Rules about noise, like rules about planning are there to allow the community a voice in their local environment. You are saying that if it is on their own land then people should be able to build what they want. But they can't at the moment because planning rules forbid them. Just as noise pollution rules forbid the new Manager from putting on loud music at night. So you are in favour of some rules (governing noise pollution) and not others (governing what people can build on their own land).
Not your usual ruthlessly logical self.
Yes, I propose abolishing planning rules, not noise pollution rules.
I'm in favour of rules against pollution (which includes noise pollution), as well as building regulations, but that whatever people want to do on their own land within the law that meets regulations should be permitted no questions asked.
Whatever is not forbidden is lawful.
What's illogical about that?
Well if you are in favour of building regulations then we don't have a problem.
You said:
"Its his land. Whatever he wants to do on his plot is up to him."
But it is not up to him. It is up to whatever the building regulations say he can do. Which is not very much these days. I thought that you were not in favour of such building regulations but now you seem to be.
It appears that you have come full circle in your views about what should and shouldn't be allowed "on your own land". And/or you will have to explain to me the difference between building regulations and planning laws.
I've been pretty clear but in case you still don't understand.
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
That truly is weird. You decide upon one set of laws you like and another you don't. Either have them or don't have them but to mix and match is hypocritical. You don't mind something that someone else does mind. And vice versa.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
The two laws boil done to
Building regulations - is the building safe to live in Planning - can I build a four bedroom house on that site.
While I don't agree with Bart on point 2 I don't see the issue with it as the 2 items serve very different purposes...
Currently you need building regulations approval in advance. Bart seems to be saying we should do away with this and just let builders get on with it.
Yes, regulation approval/certification in the form of inspections or requiring a qualified individual certifies that the work meets requirements is reasonable - but should be a binary yes/no sign off, with remedial work to be done if no. No judgements as to whether it "suits the area" or anything, simply "is this safe?"
If someone is qualified and knows what they're doing they should not need to ask every single time before they start work to check they're still doing the right thing, they should do the right thing that they're qualified to do then be signed off at the relevant point (or sign it off themselves where appropriate) that it has been done to the requisite standards.
Self-certification is what got Boeing into a lot of trouble. I understand what you want, and for something cheaper I think it would be fine, but if you find out five years after buying a house that there is something seriously wrong with it because the builders were cutting corners (a highly unlikely occurrence I know /s) and said builders are now no longer trading under that name, getting it sorted is going to be very expensive to the owner.
I've just been reading through last night's thread which some have complained about as full of racism. To be honest I don't get it. There was one ambiguous remark by Leon which felt dodgy but otherwise I'm not sure what people are getting at.
Ultimately we cannot ignore the enormous racial/cultural disparities that exist in crime statistics in this country.
Are there enormous racial/cultural disparities in crime stats?
Or is crime typically committed by young people and the crime stats are representative of young person's demographics?
[I don't know the answer to this, genuine question]
The biggest predictor for crime is sex.
Incidentally, this week a 34 year old man was spared jail after being convicted of attacking a woman who rejected his sexual advances. He punched her repeatedly and slashed her across the face, stomach and chest. He did not plead guilty. He also threatened to kill her or have others kill her.
The judge started his sentencing remarks by saying that he did not want to send him to jail. Why not? This sort of behaviour is exactly what needs to lead to a jail sentence. Or are we safe to assume that a man who flies into a rage when a woman rejects his advances will never do it again?
Court delays and a lack of prison places were part of the reason the judge suspended the sentence.
Labour is pledging to halve violence against women and girls. It is going to have to invest in the criminal justice system and prison places if it really means this.
Not necessarily. Labour can revisit white collar and non -violent sentencing to free up prison places.
Custodial sentences for serious domestic abuse are absurdly lenient. If a scumbag assaults his girlfriend give him a lengthy sentence. Twice and he's into double figure year sentences. Three times and throw away the key. The cost saving to the state of these feral bastards not impregnating assaulted girlfriend after assaulted girlfriend would be immense.
We do not have anything like enough prisons for such a policy. We also need to think what proportion of the population we are minded to lock up. I, of course, get a distorted view from my job but this kind of behaviour seems incredibly common.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Out of interest where is Durham. There does seem to be quite a bit of housebuilding round here.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Yes - just got to that.
The numbers provided represent "Dwellings built per X people each year on average."
So Milton Keynes is "one dwelling annually on average built per 165 people", or in the terms I suggested 0.6%.
And we are perhaps ignoring things such as conversions to HMO etc.
Ashfield is 134 = 0.75% and Mansfield is 112 = 0.9%, so we are pulling our weight and more on this data.
Its better than elsewhere but only pulling weight on the pathetically low 300k housing target though.
Given our chronic housing shortage, population growth and demographic growth we should be aiming for a minimum of 1 million new builds per annum. Which after a decade would still leave us with a serious housing shortage, just not as chronic as today.
Bad news for @MattW, Ashfield and Mansfield aren't hitting the required rate. Bassetlaw is though.
IF the required rate is 1/192 per pop annum, then they are hitting it, surely - as being lower numbers, with best at the bottom of the inverted list?
But at least I can get a plumber !
I have just received a note wrt yesterdays boiler fitting that an invoice has been emailed and payment would be appreciated by lunchtime.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
No it wouldn't mean doubling population, since if we increase the supply of housing and demand scales upwards, then housing pressure would not be alleviated at all.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
It's close enough. If you double the amount of housing with 10% vacant then you have the best part of double the population.
A minimum of 10% vacant, not a maximum.
And I've not advocated doubling housing, I've consistently advocated 10 million new homes for starters (which would bring us roughly in parity with the number of homes France has, for the same population as us).
Once we get closer to that, would reassess.
Plus as Sandpit says, alleviating our housing shortage would enable people in overcrowded homes to move into a home of their own. Everyone who wants one should be able to get a home of their own.
Or people could with sufficient construction have second homes. Which there's nothing wrong with, if there's no shortage for people's first homes.
So if Edwards asked for no underage images why is he the one who is guilty? Is it because he possessed the images and the law doesn't take into account whether someone intended to possess pics of underage children?
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
In 2017 the Returning Officer refused to allow James Airey to speak in Westmorland and Lonsdale when he had come within 777 votes of defeating Tim Farron. That was seen as very bad form and the same candidate was allowed to speak in 2019 after a similar but not as spectacular result.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
It's not a question of a partisan returning officer - it is just the convention in that constituency that they only do a winner's speech. MattW is suggesting that Liz Truss should have overturned that convention, purely to make him and his fellow posters look less foolish it would appear.
TBF, could anything have humiliated Truss than having to admit she was in a McDonald’s?
Possibly a Pizza Hut eating a Hawaiian, but otherwise…
Are Hawaiians on the menu in Pizza Hut? From what I have seen the fat content would be a concern apart from anything else.
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
You actually think that she should have ignored centuries of convention, and the returning officer, and barged her way to the front to make an unprecedented loser's speech? You'd have squealed with indignation if that had happened. Some people here are pitiably twisted in their Truss hatred.
I think you need to try a bit harder. Unprecedented loser's speech?
Formally it's in the discretion of the Returning Officer. I've watched hundreds of count announcements, and runners up not making speeches is rare iirc. I can't recall where that has not happened. Anyone else?
A former PM being prevented from making such a concession speech? Cloud-cuckoo land. As an agricultural area, there should lots of pigs in Downham Market - perhaps some can fly.
There's only one person who has put La Truss where she is now. The first thing she needs to do is look in the mirror.
If would have been unprecedented in a constituency where they don't do losers speeches. Did the returning officer announce her and then look blank as she stalked off? Or were they ushered away in the same way they always do it. You are suggesting that she should have pulled rank and done a speech anyway because??
It's you and your excuses for your own boorish vituperation that are pathetic. And perhaps it's you who should take a good look in the mirror.
In 2017 the Returning Officer refused to allow James Airey to speak in Westmorland and Lonsdale when he had come within 777 votes of defeating Tim Farron. That was seen as very bad form and the same candidate was allowed to speak in 2019 after a similar but not as spectacular result.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
It's not a question of a partisan returning officer - it is just the convention in that constituency that they only do a winner's speech. MattW is suggesting that Liz Truss should have overturned that convention, purely to make him and his fellow posters look less foolish it would appear.
The only person who is claiming it is a convention is Truss, who claimed she "non-verbally" indicated she wanted to speak.
Perhaps she should have "verbally" said she wanted to speak.
Housing - Lower is better (Average completions per year for the prior 10 years/ population) - for reference sub 192 would enable Labour to hit their 1.5 M housebuilding target:
Worst authorities *lim ->∞ Isles of Scilly 1954 Brighton and Hove 1630 Kingston upon Thames 1578 Richmond upon Thames 1441 Eastbourne 1358 Adur 1251 Leicester 1221 Norwich 1169 Southend-on-Sea 1136 Birmingham
Best/Qualifying areas.
190 Tower Hamlets 189 Wychavon 188 Wokingham 185 East Devon 184 West Oxfordshire 182 South Cambridgeshire 182 Central Bedfordshire 179 Maidstone 177 Mid Suffolk 173 South Norfolk 171 Telford and Wrekin 165 Milton Keynes 163 Cherwell 162 North West Leicestershire 160 Dartford 155 Ribble Valley 155 Tewkesbury 153 Vale of White Horse 149 Harborough 132 Stratford-on-Avon 126 South Derbyshire
Can you explain that one to me? Why is lower average completions per year per population better for this purpose?
Sorry my formula is upside down.
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
Yes - just got to that.
The numbers provided represent "Dwellings built per X people each year on average."
So Milton Keynes is "one dwelling annually on average built per 165 people", or in the terms I suggested 0.6%.
And we are perhaps ignoring things such as conversions to HMO etc.
Ashfield is 134 = 0.75% and Mansfield is 112 = 0.9%, so we are pulling our weight and more on this data.
Its better than elsewhere but only pulling weight on the pathetically low 300k housing target though.
Given our chronic housing shortage, population growth and demographic growth we should be aiming for a minimum of 1 million new builds per annum. Which after a decade would still leave us with a serious housing shortage, just not as chronic as today.
Bad news for @MattW, Ashfield and Mansfield aren't hitting the required rate. Bassetlaw is though.
What are Labour trying to achieve with these targets? The largest increases in percentage terms seem to be in ahem..... not so popular areas? Or is looking at the increase in % terms a bad idea?
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Colwich is where the line to stoke on trent goes of and the WCML goes down to 2 track north of it through Shugborough Tunnel.
All it carries is two of the Euston to Manchesters per hour (down trains thereof also conflict with up trains from Stafford at Colwich).
If the "stone avoiding line" had a route back to the West Coast Main Line north of Stafford, you might have a point, but it dosent south of Crewe. Although the Stoke to Crewe Line being electrified in the last few years helps.
It carries far more than 2tph at peak periods. More like 8 (or four each way).
Also, if there were no crossover at Stone it couldn't carry trains to Stoke.
I agree it would be better if it were grade separated, but your earlier claim of 'six tracks going down to two tracks' was simply daft.
Eh?
You can't go Colwich - Stone Avoiding line - back to WCML (before Crewe and slowly at any rate)
It is basically a branch.
The WCML is four track, then two HS2 tracks will join it a few miles before it becomes 2 track through Shugborough Tunnel.
As to 4TPH in the peak service, to Stoke avoiding Stafford is still 2PH (3 tph from Manchester to Euton, but one goes via Wilmslow and Crewe).
There is an extra Manchester to Euston via Stoke in the morning peak, but that goes via Stafford and Birmingham, same as all the Crosscountries (as did the London Midland Euston to Crewe via Stafford and Stoke before they decided to bypass Stoke and send it fast from Stafford to Crewe).
Rail planning is one of those areas in which it is quite astonishing how many really quite knowledgeable people there are on here.
Although they don't include that particular poster, who not only doesn't know the track layout but describes a line as 'basically a branch' before noting it takes fast services...
Yeah, what the fuck would I know after a lifetime spent in the industry.
Suggest you look up some easy to access publically available resources like then one below before talking out of the back of your head.
Or I could do what I do fairly frequently, living only a few miles away, and go and look at the track...
Given your very strange pronouncements on the MML and HS2 I'm inclined to say the answer to your first question is 'not a lot,' if I'm honest.
Looking at the track from the ground isn't particularly helpful in understanding how a complex layout like Colwich works, nor the usefulness and traffic density of the various routes from it.
A look at Whitehouse Junction (where the two tracks through Shugborough Tunnel widen back to four) and Hixon (on what you call the Stone Avoiding Line (actually it is no such thing - it passes through Stone Station on seaparate tracks where the platforms were demolished in the '60s)) on real time trains will show you that all bar a very small number of the large number of passenger and freight trains passing through Colwich Junction run through the two track bottleneck that is Shugborough Tunnel.
The site will show you that of the 27 trains that run south from or two Colwich Junction, passing either Whitehouse Jct or Hixon between 9 AM and 10 AM:
* 23 pass through Shugborough Tunnel and Whitehouse Junction between 9AM and 10AM.
* Just 4 pass through Hixon on your so called Stone avoiding Line between 9AM and 10AM .
Shall we run through how this conversation started?
You complained that with HS2 coming into the WCML at Lichfield (actually Handsacre) there would be a major bottleneck where 'six tracks go into two' at Shugborough.
I pointed out that there is a double track line from Colwich to Stone so this statement was incorrect.
You then said that didn't count as it only had two trains per hour on it.
I pointed out this was also not correct as there were more than this (up to four each way) at peak times (and I was using RealTimeTrains for data - feel free to expand it to the whole day) which you rather grudgingly accepted although you now seem to have rowed back on that.
You then said it only took a couple of expresses per hour and was, in effect, a branch line, which I pointed out was a logical contradiction.
You then got very agitated but never actually managed to explain why that wasn't a contradiction.
On your substantive point, nobody disputes the junctions are badly laid out, causing restrictions on traffic, and need sorting if the line's to be used properly. That's been a constant thing since it was electrified (arguably before). Grade separated junctions easily accessed for traffic going both ways would be needed and are not as simple as waving a wand. And that also applies wherever the DfT run HS2 to.
But the line *is* there and therefore your claim that six tracks go into two was mathematically and factually incorrect. It's your stubborn refusal to accept this that's getting you into the tangle you seem to be in.
Whether six tracks going into four is much better is another question. I'd say not, but then, I've always advocated building HS2 right the way to Manchester and Leeds. If the government are too cheeseparing to do that then at least up to Crewe would be far better than Handsacre.
To give my qualifications, I am a lifelong rail enthusiast and used to drive steam trains on a heritage railway.
Having a couple of expresses per hour on a branch line is not in any way a logical contradiction. By describing it as such you are demonstrating your lack of knowledge.
A branch line is any line that is connected to a main line and has its own services. It is engineered for lower speeds than a main line. There may also be other restrictions that you wouldn't find on a main line, e.g. weight and loading gauge.
An express is any train that goes from its origin to its destination with few or no stops.
So if a line coming off the main line at A runs to point B with 10 intermediate stops and is engineered for top speeds of, say, 50mph, it is a branch line. If there is a train originating at A and running to B without stopping at the intermediate stops, it is an express. Indeed, an express train from London to B would run along the branch line. It doesn't stop the express being an express, nor does it stop the branch line being a branch line.
I love your suggestion that going and looking at the track means you know what you are talking about. I've looked at a hospital. That doesn't make me a medical expert.
If you were talking to a group of rail enthusiasts with the posts you have made here, you would be quietly advised to stop making a fool of yourself.
I appear to have a similar background to you (except on track, rather than driving...), and I'm actually more on @ydoethur 's side on this. For instance, I don't think the linespeed on Stone to Colwich is 50 MPH? I'm pretty sure it can't really be classed as a branch line; more of a subsidiary/secondary main line.
This Northerner welcomes more houses in the North.
And as we discussed last night, house prices in Redcar are extremely expensive and unaffordable. That average price is over 5x the median income of £32k.
A 3x income to price ratio would mean that prices in Redcar should be circa £96k not £164k. A 2x income to price ratio, which would be even better and what it was when some on this site bought their first home, would make prices £64k.
Cutting London's target is wrong. Increasing targets in Redcar or anywhere else* in the North is not.
* According to the ONS the only place in the entire country with a sub-3x affordability ratio is Copeland. Though even in Copeland its only just affordable at 2.9x . . . the rest of the country, even the more relatively 'affordable' bits like Redcar are 5x plus.
Houses in Redcar are not expensive at all relative to London. Indeed a couple both earning average wage in Redcar would find the average house price there was less than 3 times their combined salary.
The average house price in London though is over 6 times the combined salary of even a couple each earning average London salary
"Relative to London" is irrelevant.
Houses in Redcar are very expensive relative to Redcar.
Check the ONS chart. House price to income ratio in Redcar has reached a record high of unaffordability, for Redcar.
3x a couple's combined salary is extremely expensive and not what we should be aiming for, 3x median salary is the ratio houses used to be and what we should get house price ratios back down to. Anywhere higher than 3x median salary needs massively more construction until houses are affordable once more.
Everyone working full time should be able to afford a house of their own.
3x combined salary is what we should be aiming for while most couples both work.
If mothers (or indeed a few more fathers) mainly stayed at home with the children and did the housework and cooked dinner and dropped the kids off at school 1950s style while their spouse or partner went to work then 3x individual median salary as was normal in the 1950s is what we should be aiming for but that is not the situation now and that also inflates house prices
No, 3x median salary is what we should be aiming for.
If both members of a couple are working then the second income ought to be able to go on affording improving quality of life, luxuries like holidays etc, not just inflate the cost of houses.
No it is not, for starters as it is unachievable as long as more women are in the workplace and not housewives. It was only achievable decades ago as only the husband tended to be the wage earner, now you have both partners and spouses in a couple working and that also pushes up salaries.
If both members of a couple are working then obviously they mainly use that extra income to buy a bigger house but in reality all it does is add further pressure on house prices.
If they want to improve quality of life or have a bit extra for luxuries the wife (or indeed husband if they are the preferred stay at home partner) can just get a local part time job and spend the rest of the time looking after the home and children. They don't both need full time paid jobs
It doesn't add pressure on houses, unless there is a limit of housing supply.
With unlimited housing supply, then houses will reach an equilibrium and become more affordable.
Yes people want homes. They also want TVs and other things. TV prices have come down, not up, because competition has driven them down.
Eliminate restrictions on housing and competition can do the same for housing and second salaries can be used to improve quality of life, not just make up for inflation.
The biggest reason that prices of TVs keep dropping is advancements in technology.
So we also need to look at new construction methods, offsite assembly, modular housing, even container-based housing, anything that makes building houses cheaper and can quickly increase supply.
The whole area needs to be “Yes and” though, so this is in addition to everything else.
The main cost of a house is the land on which it sits, otherwise house prices would be roughly the same all over the country.
The biggest disaster is the 1948 Town Planning Act (and successors).
Prior to 1948 the price of land was 2-3% of the price of a house.
Today the price of land is typically one third or more of house prices.
While land gaining consent today adds 0's to the value of that land.
Abolish planning, revert back to a pre-1948 situation, give everyone permission automatically on all land (outside AONBs) and 0s would be knocked back off the price of land with permission as it equalises the value of land. Get back to land being 2-3% of the price of the house and house prices would come down accordingly.
You ignored my question about whether or not achieving your desired outcome would make the country more attractive as a destination for immigration. It seems obvious that the answer is that it would, in which case you need to explain what level you expect the population to reach before all the non-AONBs are built on.
Yes I think it would.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
So what level do you think the population can reasonably reach?
Well its not going to happen, but in extremis if say England had the same population density of Hong Kong we would have a population of 820 million people.
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
But you also want to increase housing density, so let's be conservative and say we end up with 8% of land built on at a 20% higher density. That would mean doubling the population. Do you really think that would have no other knock on effects on the environment beyond the additional land that was built on?
No it wouldn't mean doubling population, since if we increase the supply of housing and demand scales upwards, then housing pressure would not be alleviated at all.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
It's close enough. If you double the amount of housing with 10% vacant then you have the best part of double the population.
A minimum of 10% vacant, not a maximum.
And I've not advocated doubling housing, I've consistently advocated 10 million new homes for starters (which would bring us roughly in parity with the number of homes France has, for the same population as us).
Once we get closer to that, would reassess.
Plus as Sandpit says, alleviating our housing shortage would enable people in overcrowded homes to move into a home of their own. Everyone who wants one should be able to get a home of their own.
Or people could with sufficient construction have second homes. Which there's nothing wrong with, if there's no shortage for people's first homes.
So if Edwards asked for no underage images why is he the one who is guilty? Is it because he possessed the images and the law doesn't take into account whether someone intended to possess pics of underage children?
Because they were on his device. End of.
When the thing is sent to his device a copy of the file is made in his devices memory. In law that is deemed making such an image because he is the "driver" of the device
That is the way the law works.
Read, take note and understand. Especially if you are a parent and have to deal with/advise teenagers.
I've just been reading through last night's thread which some have complained about as full of racism. To be honest I don't get it. There was one ambiguous remark by Leon which felt dodgy but otherwise I'm not sure what people are getting at.
Ultimately we cannot ignore the enormous racial/cultural disparities that exist in crime statistics in this country.
Are there enormous racial/cultural disparities in crime stats?
Or is crime typically committed by young people and the crime stats are representative of young person's demographics?
[I don't know the answer to this, genuine question]
The biggest predictor for crime is sex.
Incidentally, this week a 34 year old man was spared jail after being convicted of attacking a woman who rejected his sexual advances. He punched her repeatedly and slashed her across the face, stomach and chest. He did not plead guilty. He also threatened to kill her or have others kill her.
The judge started his sentencing remarks by saying that he did not want to send him to jail. Why not? This sort of behaviour is exactly what needs to lead to a jail sentence. Or are we safe to assume that a man who flies into a rage when a woman rejects his advances will never do it again?
Court delays and a lack of prison places were part of the reason the judge suspended the sentence.
Labour is pledging to halve violence against women and girls. It is going to have to invest in the criminal justice system and prison places if it really means this.
Not necessarily. Labour can revisit white collar and non -violent sentencing to free up prison places.
Custodial sentences for serious domestic abuse are absurdly lenient. If a scumbag assaults his girlfriend give him a lengthy sentence. Twice and he's into double figure year sentences. Three times and throw away the key. The cost saving to the state of these feral bastards not impregnating assaulted girlfriend after assaulted girlfriend would be immense.
One reason prisons are full is we have over the past few decades ratcheted up sentences. Prisons used to be more austere, with shared cells and slopping out, but sentences were shorter. Now prisons are less austere (although often overcrowded and violent) but sentences have doubled or tripled as we struggle to keep up with populist politicians and newspapers (and of course, the public!).
Paradoxically, this leads to delayed justice and dissipates any deterrent effect because there are no immediate adverse consequences.
Comments
Custodial sentences for serious domestic abuse are absurdly lenient. If a scumbag assaults his girlfriend give him a lengthy sentence. Twice and he's into double figure year sentences. Three times and throw away the key. The cost saving to the state of these feral bastards not impregnating assaulted girlfriend after assaulted girlfriend would be immense.
I loath Liz Truss like I loath no other Tory polititcian. I blame her for a lot of the present disaster the country finds itself in. But I can fully believe a partisan Returning Officer would not have allowed her to speak.
Are these rankings? And what is the area - they aren't authorities as there are under 500 of those? If it's completions per year / populations, shouldn't the numbers all be percentages between 0.1% and about 1%? Should not certain demographic and environmental considerations be considered?
Where are Ashfield and Mansfield in rank and numbers?
It's also the result of a reactive policy, not proactive. It is possible to develop clusters and direct development, and perhaps that needs to be in the mix.
Isles of Scilly is a bit of a small edge case like Gibraltar in the EU ref.
What's going on with Brighton and Hove ?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/31/huw-edwards-arrives-court-charged/
Building regulations set the law as to what is safe and legal to do.
Planning says whether you get permission to do it, even if its safe and legal someone can object and it takes time and money to get permission.
The former should exist, the second should not.
So long as you are operating within the law, permission should be automatic. If you break the law, there should be consequences retrospectively.
You don't understand what "infinite" means, but that's a common hyperbole, so whatever.
More importantly, immigration is restricted and has been restricted for centuries. Unrestricted immigration is not on the cards. So why write "unless you restrict immigration"?
It is Population / The ave number of completions per year for the previous 10 years.
So what? That's a good thing is it not?
Making the country a shit, expensive place to live where people can't afford homes isn't the way to deal with migration.
We should welcome making the country a great, affordable place to live.
I never advocated no immigration constraints.
I have advocated liberal migration rules, but not a free for all.
Thanks, though. Surprised the Flatlands aren't meeting the target given the amounting of building we've seen.
The historic announcement of QEII death will always be associated with someone convicted of underage sex crimes.
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/us/dukakis-lead-widens-according-to-new-poll.html
Ie age 12 or 17 for example
Person known to them or not.
The change from 16 to 18 in the age limit has rather muddied the waters and means that two 17 year olds can enjoy a sexual relationship but become PAEDOS if they photo each other in a provocative way. Obviously Mr Edwards is much older (but could still legally, if not morally have an affair with a 16 year old if not in professional care of them).
Although it would be grimly amusing if the British Library got raided and various directors done because their archives include copies of The Sun from the '80s with topless Samantha aged 16 in it.
Sources:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/datasets/housebuildingukpermanentdwellingsstartedandcompletedbylocalauthority
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/datasets/localauthoritiesinenglandtable2
The list above implies only 100 new homes build per year, while I'd have though some of these new builds had that many flats in a single building.
But a suspended sentence most likely. Not least because there have been plenty of cases this year of men having done far worse in terms of indecent images of children and being spared jail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drd53yf9TaE
Expect there to be lots of "who knew what, when?" being asked of the BBC.
It’s also an offence that has changed somewhat in the digital age, no longer requiring a dark room and a lab full of chemicals.
Also interesting that the photos refer to a chat on WhatsApp. Presumably Edwards was sending rather than receiving the images in question, which also begs the question of how many others might be involved in the same offences? Presumably one of those receiving the messages was the source of the police report.
#DIV/0! Isles of Scilly
1868 Brighton and Hove
1723 Kingston upon Thames
1672 Adur
1403 Richmond upon Thames
1352 Hastings
1238 Southend-on-Sea
1217 Leicester
1195 Eastbourne
1164 Birmingham
I'll do one for prior 5 year starts
Now since that's well over 10% of the planets population, that's clearly not going to happen.
Getting back to reality, currently about 5% of our land goes on housing (including open spaces, gardens, parks etc not just the bricks and mortar). We have plenty of space, even if we made that 6, 7 or 8% of land it would barely make a dent in our "green and pleasant land".
I hope we'll see said wingnuts being tried and sentenced as a priority. To descend on a community in grief with the purpose of racial/religious shit-stirring beggars belief.
And also given your views on what you should be able to do "on your own land", it is bizarre in the extreme that you should be in favour of a third party dictating how you should do it.
Unbelievable that a woman who must be suffering unimaginable pain should be put in this position because, in response to male violence against girls, other men decide to be violent against others.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2022/statistics-on-ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2022-html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/872042/leading-religions-of-prisoners-in-england-and-wales/
Firstly whites are clearly not the least criminal ethnic group.
Black people at 4% of the overall population are 12% of the prison population
Alarmingly among under 18s, they are 30% of the prison population.
There are several times more Muslims in prison than there are people of all other minority religions combined.
When you actually think about the diversity of the black and Muslim population you might argue lumping them all together is unwise. But it does suggest trouble within SOME black and SOME Muslim communities.
In my experience, it really ISN'T standard operating practice for a normal loser (or even just number 2) to make a speech - though for a losing incumbent not to make a speech would certainly look graceless where I live. And South West Norfolk - what used to be Truss' constituency - last saw an incumbent MP lose their seat in 1959.
But, to the bemusement of all the activists at the count, another losing Tory (junior) Minister stalked off in a huff at one of our local counts. To say the least, his behaviour looked graceless - from a party that once cultivated good manners in public, even from its most manipulating and self-serving MPs.
We'll never know whether Truss is lying, because the returning officer will never disclose whether he ushered everyone off or not - or quietly suggested to Truss that a discrete exit might avoid even more adverse publicity. I imagine Truss supporters will believe she's being conspired against (yet again), Truss mistrusters will believe she's creating excuses - but most people will be a great deal more interested in the effect of her policies on the national (and SW Norfolk) wellbeing.
The female police chief who was prosecuting for “making” a few years ago had a video sent to her on WhatsApp by a relative. She was clearly not responsible for making the original video, but that was the law she was prosecuted for.
We don’t (yet) know the details of the Edwards case, so it’s difficult to make any kind of judgement from the outside. Presumably more details will emerge once he’s been sentenced.
I don't have any objection to current migration rules or rates.
If anything though I'd tighten up on rules allowing unskilled, low wage migrants and liberalise rules for higher skilled, higher wage migrants.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you statement but it's a crime that was far harder to commit when that law was originally written...
#DIV/0! City of London
5314 Gosport
3903 Portsmouth
3885 Richmond upon Thames
2492 Southend-on-Sea
1952 Plymouth
1878 Eastbourne
1758 Norwich
1729 Erewash
1707 Kingston upon Thames
-----
145 Rushcliffe
143 South Holland
143 Vale of White Horse
141 Ribble Valley
138 Milton Keynes
135 Tewkesbury
125 Harborough
121 Mid Suffolk
116 South Derbyshire
112 Stratford-on-Avon
I support liberal everything that is not forbidden is legal laws.
We should have rules on what you can or can't do, then everything you want to do within the law should be automatically allowed by you choosing to do it.
We should not have everything that is not permitted is forbidden rules that require some busybody to approve or decline your actions.
Standards yes, asking permission no.
Building regulations - is the building safe to live in
Planning - can I build a four bedroom house on that site.
While I don't agree with Bart on point 2 I don't see the issue with Bart's viewpoint as the 2 items serve very different purposes and Bart isn't arguing about quality control.
Planning rules relate, mostly, to how the thing looks, impact on others (sight-lines, overlooking/ shadowing etc).
Building regulations are about ensuring that buildings don't fall down and are reasonably well insulated, on the whole.
I'm not with Bart on the planning abolition, although I would support reform,* but his position of abolish planning but keep building regs is perfectly logically consistent.
*An oddity is that we had planning permission rejected for a rear extension that margially cut the 45 degree angle from a neighbour's window, even though they had no objection (it's a slightly oddly positioned window - there was no real impact from our extension) but had a side extension with much greater impact on our other neighbours granted (they also had no objection, but gives us a degree of overlooking on to their land and shades some of their side windows - still much greater distance than common between new builds so I guess that's why it got through)
Well Muslims dominate the minority religions, so this doesn't tell us much.
What proportion of the prison population is Muslim and what proportion of the general population in England and Wales is?
It will end in tears.
I want to see the supply of housing increased such that supply exceeds demand, so prices fall, and nobody is forced to live in a run down home as there are better/cheaper options available to choose from instead.
A minimum of 10% of properties should at any one time be vacant, both to have a natural churn as people move, and to ensure the worst homes aren't moved into and instead are sold (at rock bottom prices) only to those who desire to refurbish them.
Supply needs to grow more than demand. So laying all supply growth down with a commensurate demand growth is a fallacy.
(If it does not, there's still the question of why there are ethnic group differences in SES)
Not heard that one used for a while but there was a big case about 20 years ago where thousands got their collar felt (and many committed suicide) after the US authorities shut down a website and passed the credit card details of (alleged) customers to UK Knacker.
The numbers provided represent "Dwellings built per X people each year on average."
So Milton Keynes is "one dwelling annually on average built per 165 people", or in the terms I suggested 0.6%.
And we are perhaps ignoring things such as conversions to HMO etc.
Ashfield is 134 = 0.75% and Mansfield is 112 = 0.9%, so we are pulling our weight and more on this data.
Having a couple of expresses per hour on a branch line is not in any way a logical contradiction. By describing it as such you are demonstrating your lack of knowledge.
A branch line is any line that is connected to a main line and has its own services. It is engineered for lower speeds than a main line. There may also be other restrictions that you wouldn't find on a main line, e.g. weight and loading gauge.
An express is any train that goes from its origin to its destination with few or no stops.
So if a line coming off the main line at A runs to point B with 10 intermediate stops and is engineered for top speeds of, say, 50mph, it is a branch line. If there is a train originating at A and running to B without stopping at the intermediate stops, it is an express. Indeed, an express train from London to B would run along the branch line. It doesn't stop the express being an express, nor does it stop the branch line being a branch line.
I love your suggestion that going and looking at the track means you know what you are talking about. I've looked at a hospital. That doesn't make me a medical expert.
If you were talking to a group of rail enthusiasts with the posts you have made here, you would be quietly advised to stop making a fool of yourself.
Possibly a Pizza Hut eating a Hawaiian, but otherwise…
Given our chronic housing shortage, population growth and demographic growth we should be aiming for a minimum of 1 million new builds per annum. Which after a decade would still leave us with a serious housing shortage, just not as chronic as today.
Those are very expensive mistake to get wrong if you need to rectify later.
And I've not advocated doubling housing, I've consistently advocated 10 million new homes for starters (which would bring us roughly in parity with the number of homes France has, for the same population as us).
Once we get closer to that, would reassess.
Plus as Sandpit says, alleviating our housing shortage would enable people in overcrowded homes to move into a home of their own. Everyone who wants one should be able to get a home of their own.
Or people could with sufficient construction have second homes. Which there's nothing wrong with, if there's no shortage for people's first homes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/31/huw-edwards-guilty-latest/
“The court heard that Edwards had been involved in online chat with an adult man on WhatsApp between Dec 2020 and Aug 2021, who sent him 377 sexual images, of which 41 were indecent images of children.
“The bulk of these, 36, were sent during a two-month period.
“On Feb 2 2021 the male asked whether what he was sending was too young, in response to which Edwards told him not to send any underage images, the court heard.
“The indecent images that were sent included seven category A, the worst, 12 category B, and 22 category C.
“Of the category A images, the estimated age of most of the children was between 13 and 15, but one was age between seven and nine, the court was told.”
If someone is qualified and knows what they're doing they should not need to ask every single time before they start work to check they're still doing the right thing, they should do the right thing that they're qualified to do then be signed off at the relevant point (or sign it off themselves where appropriate) that it has been done to the requisite standards.
However, the description is correct because it branches off the WCML.
Symilarly, the lines from Brighton to Eastbourne and Hastings and Brighton to Portsmouth and Southampton are designated up and down east and west branch on leaving Brighton.
And the Guilford Via Cobham line leaving the SWML at Surbiton is designated throughout as the up and down Cobham Branch.
Had to get the Quails out!
On the similar tendency "extreme pornography" laws, here's the famous Tiger Porn case of an innocent man who was locked up on remand for 6 months, and denied access to his 1 year old child for a year, all because of the bad law. an unprofessional prosecution, and general prejudice. He also had to leave his home town after threats and abuse.
We will never know how many miscarriages of justice there were, how many innocent people killed themselves, how many marriages were destroyed, and all the rest.
Andrew Holland, 51, suffered a heart attack, received hate mail and was targeted by vigilantes after being charged with possessing two videos that he was sent by friends as a joke.
He said he viewed one for just six seconds but the charges led to him being the subject of “widespread ridicule” and being mistakenly labelled a paedophile. After more than six months on bail, the charge of possession of an extreme pornographic image was dropped in December 2009 when prosecutors realised that the “animal” was a man dressed up in a tiger suit.
The Crown Prosecution Service said it only recognised that it was a man when the tiger was heard on the soundtrack saying “that’s grrrrrrreat”, like Tony the Tiger from Frosties’ breakfast cereal adverts.
...
“I lost my job, I had to move and I ended up having a heart attack with all the stress of it,” he said. “People were ringing me in the middle of the night. Three young lads turned up at my door and were calling me everything. I was threatened on more than one occasion.”
The offence of possession of an extreme pornographic image was introduced in 2008 and has resulted in more than 5,500 prosecutions, the majority for clips of bestiality. Ministers had predicted that there would be just 30 cases a year.
Under the law, a person can be prosecuted for possession of a pornographic image labelled “extreme” if it shows necrophilia or bestiality, threatens someone’s life or could cause serious injury to anus, breasts or genitals. In addition, the law applies to “grossly offensive” or “disgusting” images – a highly subjective test
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/six-months-on-bail-for-being-sent-spoof-video-of-a-tiger-having-sex-that-was-really-a-man-in-a-tiger-suit-9819776.html
We need far more homes in the North not just the South, I've consistently said that.
I understand what you want, and for something cheaper I think it would be fine, but if you find out five years after buying a house that there is something seriously wrong with it because the builders were cutting corners (a highly unlikely occurrence I know /s) and said builders are now no longer trading under that name, getting it sorted is going to be very expensive to the owner.
But at least I can get a plumber !
I have just received a note wrt yesterdays boiler fitting that an invoice has been emailed and payment would be appreciated by lunchtime.
Short supply chains in Ashfield !
"He added that Edwards "did not keep any images, did not send any to anyone else and did not and has not sought similar images from anywhere else".
Perhaps she should have "verbally" said she wanted to speak.
Nobody to blame but herself.
When the thing is sent to his device a copy of the file is made in his devices memory. In law that is deemed making such an image because he is the "driver" of the device
That is the way the law works.
Read, take note and understand. Especially if you are a parent and have to deal with/advise teenagers.
Paradoxically, this leads to delayed justice and dissipates any deterrent effect because there are no immediate adverse consequences.