When polled against other candidates head to head, Kemi Badenoch leads in every contestvs Cleverly: 47% – 38%vs Jenrick: 48% – 33%vs Tugendhat: 49% – 31%vs Patel: 55% – 26%vs Stride: 61% – 14%not shown are those who answered don’t know/would not vote… pic.twitter.com/HdJNpueArF
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https://www.jamesesses.com/p/exciting-announcement
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce814gz08n8o
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50368-kemi-badenoch-leads-in-first-yougov-poll-of-tory-members-for-2024-leadership-contest
One thing we can certainly say is Stride or Patel are not going to win given their poor polling with members
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/james-cleverly-tops-list-who-would-make-good-tory-leader-3-in-5-say-they-dont-care
Green Belt should be abolished entirely. It should not exist at all. If we are to encourage more sprawl so we can have more developments for people to live in, as I think we should, then the Green Belt just gets in the way of that for no justifiable reason.
Playing with the map, I can see whole swathes of undeveloped land in Vale, which are ripe for potential development, that are not in AONB or Woodland etc.
If you're going to build entire new towns, or large sprawling developments, then placing them in places like Vale where there is open land available to be developed is better than placing them on top of pre-existing buildings in places like Birmingham that have already been developed.
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
- Ozempic for all
- New National Chivvying Service to get everyone out of bed at 6am for their morning exercise
- Fines for Fatties - on the spot penalties for being out in public while overweight
One of the things that I find interesting is how many try to use Archbishop Welby as a blank slate / straw man to use in their politics as a fake-up icon of things they oppose.
On one end Andrew Graystone who wrote that piece is trying to in a way paint him as a Muscular Evangelical something something taking over the Church of England for the HTB tendency - HTB being defined as the heart of CofE evangelicalism (it isn't, and CofE evangelicalism is far more complex).
If you look at the National Conservative types (Truss, Braverman, Rees-Mogg possibly shading into Tice, Bridgen, Carl Benjamin type rhetoric) they attempt to portray Welby as representing liberal toleration of gay marriage and 'transgenderism' being imported wholesale into the CofE. Those are themes also being deployed by the near-edge of the far tight, shading into Tommy Robinson's "Patriotic Christian" allies / useful idiots.
(There I'm using Tommy Robinson as my own icon.)
Both of those positions are caricatures of where Welby stands, one trying to link him to a harder edged conservative evangelical tradition that is more accurately defined by Reform (evangelical movement not political party) movement linked to Rev David Holloway / Evangelical Times or even James Anderton (the Manchester anti-gay policeman) type emphases, the other trying to make him a liberal icon.
Reality is much more subtle, as I am sure we agree.
One of my concerns is UK Natcons adopting more simplistic / dogmatic ideas from some US Evangelical traditions. Neither UK conservatives or the UK itself will swallow that except at the margins. There imo lies a wrecked future if the Conservative Party goes in that direction.
In 2016 the Tory PM of the time David Cameron led the Remain campaign but it was 52% of British voters who voted for Brexit, then they gave Boris a landslide majority to deliver it in 2019.
Even now the majority of Tory voters still back staying outside the EU and EEA and even most voters overall would reject rejoin if it required the Euro for instance
and
(b) Who d'y'recon gets the gig?
https://conservativehome.com/2024/08/21/next-tory-leader-which-mp-is-backing-whom-cleverly-surges-ahead-to-two-supporters/
Hmmm....they don't exactly have a great track record.
https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1826817115526951416
Badenoch will probably win.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
The prosecution rests their case
Abolish planning consent and allow people to build what they want wherever they want it.
See how long scarcity lasts then.
If 20 million mansions get built, then everyone can live in a mansion and the housing crisis is over.
Please cater for me too.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
You can easily fit five detached houses within an acre. 20 million of those would take 4 million acres then, which the UK easily has available undeveloped.
So no, absence of land to build on is not our problem. Everyone could live in a detached house, no problem. Let alone a semi-detached house.
But we can't all live like that; too many big gardens and the amenities stop being within walking distance. Even if you liberalise planning, you can't change geometry. So we have to make tradeoffs. Looking at prices, most people prefer a smaller gaff with life they don't have to drive to to something bigger and remoter.
Keep building the second for those who really want it, sure, but choice points to building more urbia than suburbia. The downside is that it needs more thought and (trigger alert) planning to make it work.
Just as if people have kids in a house that was previously owned by pensioners, or if a house that was owned by people with kids is sixty years later still owned by the same family who now don't have kids but do need care instead, then we need to adapt to those changes too.
If someone owns land and wants to sell it to someone who wants to build houses on it, why should that not be allowed?
The Morning After The Night Before. Beautiful natural side-lighting.
The decor is a good example of Modern Hipster style which is on-trend in student houses.
The simple amount of land available in the UK isn't, of course, the only practical constraint on housebuilding.
I think the situation is still somewhat existential for the party, but the odds of fading into electoral irrelevance are lower than they were, not all that long ago.
That's probably a good thing for the country and our politics.
Could be a long road back to power, though.
Prior to the awful introduction of the planning act in the UK land was worth a meagre 2% of the cost of a house.
Today land is typically worth 33% of the cost of houses.
That's not because land is magically higher demand now, its because of planning.
Land without consent that gains it can see 100x increase in its value. Again not due to the land actually being worth more or greater or lesser supply, all artificial due to the planning system.
Deregulation would solve the problems here.
----------------- Quotes buggered.
I'd do something sheepish, then have a lamb sandwich.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Voting to tell other people they can't build on their land, that I do not support.
Once you move from the structural plan you can move to a more detailed plan. That helps determine where in the area the additional housing supply is best placed for reasons of the existing roads, schools, etc. If I owned 10 acres and built 30 houses on it I may cause serious logjams in the local roads or a very difficult to deal with surge in membership of the local primary school.
These are the issues that cause planning delay. And we simply cannot operate a society without them.
I'm sorry, but the onus is on you to demonstrate the practicality of your libertarian utopia, which almost no one else is advocating. A few rhetorical points aren't going to do it.
Everyone could afford a house and we could quite literally double our population and we still wouldn't have covered most of the countryside with housing.
https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
Is that a pass mark?
Terms used in Harris speech:
America, American, Americans: 34 times.
Country or nation: ~ 20 times.
Democrats or Democratic Party: 0 times.
Freedom: 12 times.
Family or families: 8 times.
Opportunity: 6 times.
Race or gender: Once ("regardless of party, race, or gender").
https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1826950713622036770
There's plenty of land in the South East that those who want a house could sprawl into.
And I never advocated that we should only have houses, merely that everyone who wants one should be able to build one.
People who prefer a flat in a city centre should have that choice too.
I'm pro-choice.
Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
You
Hello Copilot. Is it true that if you purchase British gold sovereigns you don't have to pay capital gains tax when you sell them?
Copilot
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Are you considering investing in gold sovereigns?
1 https://www.royalmint.com/invest/discover/invest-in-gold/all-that-investors-need-to-know-about-gold-and-tax/
2 https://cheshiregoldxchange.co.uk/gold/do-you-pay-tax-when-selling-gold-in-the-uk-2024-25-capital-gains-tax
3 https://www.gold.co.uk/info/capital-gains-tax/
4 https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/info/how-to-buy-gold/paying-capital-gains-tax-on-gold/
5 https://www.royalmint.com/gold-price/capital-gains-tax-on-investments/
Suburban spawl of pleasant [semi-]detached houses with gardens is the precise opposite of a concrete jungle.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
https://www.royalmint.com/invest/discover/invest-in-gold/all-that-investors-need-to-know-about-gold-and-tax/#:~:text=Gold Bullion Coins and Capital Gains Tax&text=In fact, all gold, silver,the popular Queen's Beasts range.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/146603273#/?channel=RES_BUY
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144952808#/?channel=RES_BUY
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/140947838#/?channel=RES_BUY
I forsee an interesting challenge for Starmer, but perhaps even more of a challenge for the new tory leader - just to stay relevant.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But let's suppose you wanted to house everyone in London at the density of Havering (and that's about fifty percent green belt).
Havering is 2300 people per square km. London's population is about 9 million. So you would need about 4000 square kilometres or a radius of about 35 km. That's not much more than London already is, going East/West, though a fair bit bigger North/South. Croydon is about 15km from central London.
TLDR: Most of London already is houses, and is pretty low density for a capital city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFOpw5UCn8s