Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
There's always doubt, but I agree. Nothing would get out the Labour vote better than Farage leading in the polls.
The problem is that "the Labour vote" is a subset of the Labour vote.
The Democrats need to reach out to the kind of Red-State women that resent being told they should never be homemakers, but don't want their rights taken away.
The problem is that the incredibly binary and polarised nature of U.S. political discourse, nowadays increasingly represented by Bluesky and Twitter, and with that trend spreading here, makes all these kinds of nuances and conversations more difficult, than they should be.
I don't think that the Democrats have said "Women should never be Homemakers", so I would be interested in where you source that idea.
The "Trad Wife" influencer thing on Social Media is partly US ultra-Fundamentalism, and partly conspicuous consumption.
In order to be a "Trad-Wife" influencer, you need to be married to a wealthy man with their own significant wealth and property, as a sort of reinvented trophy wife. We see them spending hours on hobbies such as needlework, dress-making, artisanal baking etc, but not hours cleaning bathrooms or doing laundry.
30 years ago it was possible for an unskilled man working in a unionised job at the nuclear power plant to run two cars, have a detached house in a good neighbourhood, wife at home looking after 3 kids etc, but that Simpsons lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for blue collar Americans.
If you need 2 or more incomes to pay the rent, being a Trad Wife is not possible, and Trad Husbands earning enough to support such a lifestyle have gone the way of the crinoline petticoat.
Without wishing to come over all @HYUFD there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation on housing costs
1. Housing is a desirable asset 2. Housing is a scarce asset 3. Therefore housing costs will tend to increase to the maximum a family unit can afford 4. When the majority of women stayed at home the average income was X and housing costs a percentage of that 5. Women deciding to work increased housing affordability but, over time, resulted in an adjustment to the cost of housing 6. Consequently we are now in a non-Pareto equilibrium with more people having to work harder to afford the same lifestyle as previous generations had 7. There is no obvious solution: building houses in an uncontrolled fashion has non-economic costs; you don’t want to restrict the right of women to work; perhaps restrictions on access to capital to buy houses? Perhaps continued efforts to make them a less attractive investment for individuals? Perhaps restrictions on the rights of non-residents to own houses?
Except #2 is artificial.
There is no more a reason for housing to be scarce than there is for TVs, DVD players or anything else to be scarce.
There is little reason competition can't create more housing until supply and demand reach a better equilibrium, except for the fact we put hurdles in the way via our artificial planning system.
Fix #2 and the rest of your chain falls apart. There is then an obvious solution: build houses in an uncontrolled fashion, let the free market fix it. Supply and demand and let the invisible hand work.
Even then the average home would still only be affordable to 2 earner couples as most women still work full time, whereas 50 years ago the average home was affordable to a 1 earner couple as most women stayed home and were full time mothers after they had children or only worked part time after having a family
If house prices collapsed back down to where they should be instead of being artificially inflated then people would have the choice to either have only one person working, or the second person's income could be going on luxuries like holidays orfancier cars/homes etc rather than going on a necessity.
House prices are driven by affordability
Even in your scenario of unlimited housing there will always be someone who will pay more for the nicer house with the better view. And that will cascade. Houses are. It fungible assets.
(Not to mention a collapse of house prices would collapse banks and so people won’t be going on holidays or buying fancier cars in that scenario )
So what if some will pay more for a house with a nicer view? Many people just want somewhere to live.
Yes there are people who will pay more for a nicer view, while others will pay less for somewhere comfortable to live.
Just as some will pay more for a nicer car, while others will pay less for something that can do the job.
Currently people are paying more because they have to, in order to survive, not out of choice. Getting a "nicer" house is a luxury, getting any is a necessity. That is the distinction you are failing to grasp.
I’m not missing. The distinction. What I’m saying is that your utopia is an unstable equilibrium that won’t last
Why?
It lasted in the 1930s, the only reason it stopped was the war and the post-war government made the horrendous mistake of passing the town and country planning act.
It lasts in other countries with liberal regimes that let people build.
Because house prices change.
Affordability is the constraint, not the number of houses.
No, supply and demand is the constraint.
When demand exceeds supply then prices go up.
When supply exceeds demand then prices go down.
If supply exceeds demand and people spend less on a necessity, they can then choose to spend any extra income on whatever luxury suits them - whether that be a nicer home (rather than any home), or a nicer car, or nicer travel or anything else.
Rather than paying through the nose for a damp-ridden shitbox squalor because that's all that's available and its either that or homelessness.
Imagine that you wave a magic wand and an extra 50m Barrett homes suddenly materialise. How much will Buckingham Palace be worth?
Who gives a shit?
The question is how much people will be paying on their own housing costs. That would be much less with 50m extra homes on the market.
What some other homes cost is utterly irrelevant.
It all depends. A glut of housing can coexist with a lack of affordability if it doesn't meet what the market wants. Even in the UK market today there are houses that you metaphorically can't give away.
Good, there's nothing wrong with having houses that you 'can't give away' because better ones are available elsewhere. It means the ones you can't give away are inferior/too expensive/run down/in shit areas and they can be bulldozed and the area redeveloped to another purpose ratchetting up quality.
Better than people living in overcrowded, expensive slums because TINA.
Overcrowded slums are the apotheosis of a free market, resulting from the fact that the 'dwellers' are too poor to afford a nice house for themselves. Nice houses cost money and lots of people don't have much. The price of a house reflects the cost of building and maintaining it, not just the land value. Even if your libertarian anti-planning solution were to reduce the land value to zero (it won't) the rest of the cost is irreducible. Of course, we can always tax the working, productive part of the population to build nice homes for those who neither toil nor spin - a timely Christian policy.
The cost of building housing is heavily related to... the cost of housing. Both in direct labour and the cost of materials.
So if we reduce the cost of housing on the land and markup side, the construction and material cost can come down as well.
No it isn't.
I am a minor partner in a building company. Wages, wages, wages & materials. In that order. On many jobs, direct labour is more than 50% of the project cost.
No doubt there's more to it. but it seems to me that your Wages, wages, and wages costs are explained by a chap working, one watching him, and one supervising. I've been entertaining this theory for many years - and where you can be reasonably sure you get the whole picture - streetworks and the like it's as I say, or slightly more watching and less doing on average.
Not on the sites we work. Skilled trades have rocketed in cost. Because the ungrateful sparkies etc. refuse to sleep in garden sheds. Some of them even want a bathroom for sole use by them and their family.
But what I observe isn't untrue is it?
Massive inefficiency is common on bigger sites. Jobs stopped because of a single tool missing!
They tend to use larger numbers of cheaper (lower skilled people). Because managers get all upset by wages going up. But not by hiring lots of people to manage....
In reality, you want fewer, better skilled people.
So what's happening whereby we have in our streetworks perhaps 200% overmanning?
(I do recognise that digging holes in streets is very hard work, and apparent loafing around may just be recovering)
Digging holes shouldn't be done by hand - reserve that for clearance around delicate stuff.
Runs on electricity. Here it is about to be lowered into a basement
Well get yourself to London and do the streetworks.
I actually fixed a couple of pavement slabs with a neighbour (builder), over Christmas break.
Hi-Viz, some workman's gear and some cones. No one challenged us.
Would it be presuming too much on our nascent friendship then to ask you to pay some attention to the whole area?
It's part of an evil plan - we create a parallel state that works, then gradually take over the county.
Once you control all the pavements, then even the PM can't get out of No. 10.
{Laughs in Dr Evil}
Guerilla gardening is a thing, too.
There's a local wildlife site which has been mismanaged by the council - it is supposed to be a remnant of lowland heath with an interesting and locally rare species on it. Most of the site was destroyed to build a leisure centre in the 1980 but a tiny piece remains.
All they needed to do was strim it once a year at the right height, and they couldn't even manage that.
I am very very tempted to the job myself with a brushcutter (I do have a ticket) and some official looking clothing but it is a bit public so it might have to be hand tools at dawn.
Jobs like that you'll probably get more attention if you do it at dawn.
Do it like you belong there and people won't look twice.
The council people start very early so I was thinking that might be seen as normal.
They can't go around spraying everything with weedkiller (as is their wont) with lots of people around.
Brother in law used to be paid to do the job properly but he was 'too expensive' (a couple of hundred quid a year) and the council said their 'team' could do it instead. Ha! It might have helped if they could identify what they were supposed to be conserving.
Anyway, this kind of thing was Dave's plan, wasn't it? The Big Society. A good idea in theory...
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Russia is currently run by an ultra-nationalist mafia group. The rules are
1) Putin gets half. 2) If the piece of the country you are given actually collapses through you stealing too much, he kills you.
Odd behaviour - I believe the punishment here is a knighthood.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Russia is currently run by an ultra-nationalist mafia group. The rules are
1) Putin gets half. 2) If the piece of the country you are given actually collapses through you stealing too much, he kills you.
But this falls into the category of 'how could things be any worse'? It's basically signalling intensity of dislike of the current regime, which I share.
We heard a lot of this before the General Election.
Trust me: things can get worse. Much, much worse.
The fact it's not obvious to see what that would look like at this stage doesn't mean that doesn't exist.
Worse would be a return to Yeltsin style free-for-all-stealathon. What else is there?
"You talk as you have nothing to do with this. This is all your doing, this infection, you call freedom without meaning and without purpose. You have given my country to gangsters, and prostitutes. You have TAKEN EVERYTHING FROM US! There's nothing left."
Fragmentation of the State: Regional governors, particularly in resource-rich areas like Siberia, may assert independence, leading to the breakup of the Russian Federation. Civil War: Rival factions within the military, intelligence agencies, and oligarchs could vie for control, potentially igniting widespread violence. Rise of Warlords: Local leaders or warlords may fill the void, leading to lawlessness across vast territories.
2. Nuclear Weapons Security Risks
Loose Nukes: In the absence of centralized control, Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal could fall into the hands of rogue actors, terrorist groups, or regional factions. Misuse of Nuclear Arsenal: A faction attempting to use nuclear weapons to consolidate power could provoke global conflict. Nuclear Blackmail: Dissident factions could threaten nuclear strikes to gain international recognition or concessions.
3. Rise of Extremist or Hardline Regimes
Ultranationalist Takeover: A far-right or ultranationalist regime could emerge, potentially escalating tensions with neighboring countries and fueling aggressive territorial ambitions. Authoritarian Strongman: Another autocrat may rise, potentially more ruthless or unpredictable than Putin. Religious Fundamentalism: Radical religious or ideological movements may exploit the chaos to gain influence, particularly in volatile regions like the North Caucasus.
4. Economic Collapse and Humanitarian Crisis
Economic Freefall: With the central government gone, financial systems could collapse, leading to hyperinflation, unemployment, and severe shortages of basic goods. Humanitarian Disaster: Widespread poverty, famine, and a breakdown of healthcare systems could result in mass displacement and significant loss of life. Mass Migration: Millions of refugees may flee to Europe, Central Asia, or China, creating international strain.
5. Escalation of Regional Conflicts
Neighboring State Interventions: Countries like China, Turkey, or NATO members might intervene to secure borders, resources, or protect ethnic minorities, risking international confrontation. Renewed Wars: Unresolved conflicts in Ukraine, Georgia, or the Caucasus could reignite and intensify. Territorial Disputes: Regions like Kaliningrad, Crimea, or the Kuril Islands may become flashpoints for disputes with neighboring states.
Energy Supply Shock: Disruption of Russian oil and gas exports could cause a global energy crisis, driving up prices and destabilizing economies worldwide. Market Instability: The collapse of one of the world's largest economies could lead to severe global market disruptions.
7. International Security Threats
Terrorism: Extremist groups may take advantage of the chaos to operate freely or acquire advanced weaponry. Proxy Wars: Global powers like the US, China, and NATO may back competing factions, leading to prolonged proxy conflicts. Global Spillover: Uncontrolled flows of weapons and fighters from Russia could destabilize neighboring regions and beyond.
8. Ethnic and Religious Conflicts
Ethnic Uprisings: Long-suppressed ethnic groups within Russia, such as the Chechens, Tatars, or Bashkirs, may push for independence, sparking conflict. Islamist Insurgencies: Radical groups in the North Caucasus and Central Asia might exploit the collapse to expand their influence.
9. Environmental Catastrophe
Neglect of Critical Infrastructure: The collapse of governance could lead to the failure of nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, and other critical infrastructure, causing environmental disasters. Resource Exploitation: A lack of regulation might lead to rampant resource extraction, causing long-term ecological damage.
10. Broader Geopolitical Consequences
China’s Expansion: China may seek to assert control over parts of Siberia or leverage the collapse for strategic gain. NATO Expansion: NATO could attempt to stabilize former Russian territories, risking confrontation with remaining Russian factions. Global Power Shift: The collapse of a major global player like Russia would leave a vacuum, potentially altering the global balance of power and emboldening other authoritarian regimes."
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
You could do worse than assuming £2,500 a square meter.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
Energy Supply Shock: Disruption of Russian oil and gas exports could cause a global energy crisis, driving up prices and destabilizing economies worldwide. Market Instability: The collapse of one of the world's largest economies could lead to severe global market disruptions.
7. International Security Threats
Terrorism: Extremist groups may take advantage of the chaos to operate freely or acquire advanced weaponry. Proxy Wars: Global powers like the US, China, and NATO may back competing factions, leading to prolonged proxy conflicts. Global Spillover: Uncontrolled flows of weapons and fighters from Russia could destabilize neighboring regions and beyond.
8. Ethnic and Religious Conflicts
Ethnic Uprisings: Long-suppressed ethnic groups within Russia, such as the Chechens, Tatars, or Bashkirs, may push for independence, sparking conflict. Islamist Insurgencies: Radical groups in the North Caucasus and Central Asia might exploit the collapse to expand their influence.
9. Environmental Catastrophe
Neglect of Critical Infrastructure: The collapse of governance could lead to the failure of nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, and other critical infrastructure, causing environmental disasters. Resource Exploitation: A lack of regulation might lead to rampant resource extraction, causing long-term ecological damage.
10. Broader Geopolitical Consequences
China’s Expansion: China may seek to assert control over parts of Siberia or leverage the collapse for strategic gain. NATO Expansion: NATO could attempt to stabilize former Russian territories, risking confrontation with remaining Russian factions. Global Power Shift: The collapse of a major global player like Russia would leave a vacuum, potentially altering the global balance of power and emboldening other authoritarian regimes."
How's that?
1, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 would either be a continuation of the status quo or an improvement upon it.
Especially 1 I would say is a better case scenario.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
We could send them Liz. Imagine what they could do with all that growth. As I remember Mrs.Thatcher was popular in Gorbachev-era Russia. And Liz is her true successor - in both her and the Telegraphs fevered minds.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
You could do worse than assuming £2,500 a square meter.
For 3.5x10m at 2500 per sqm, that's 87,500. That's too much, I need it to be <50K. If we cut it down to the bare minimum to make it wind-and-water-tight (so temporary plugs in the windows instead of frame-and-glass, no plaster on walls, no connected electric, even omit the upper-storey floor so all you have is a wind-and-watertight shell), that might be possible.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
There's always doubt, but I agree. Nothing would get out the Labour vote better than Farage leading in the polls.
Not if the Labour voters are voting for him
And on Man Utd, their display is abject beyond belief and unless they bring in new signings in January they could end up in a relegation battle
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
Le Pen is (joint) favourite to win in 2027, and unlike some times in the past, I don't think the odds are wrong. Indeed, I'd have her clear favourite (albeit not by much). It's not 2002 any more and not an 82-18 country any more.
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
We could send them Liz. Imagine what they could do with all that growth. As I remember Mrs.Thatcher was popular in Gorbachev-era Russia. And Liz is her true successor - in both her and the Telegraphs fevered minds.
Gorbachev is probably as good as it gets in Russia.
Yeltsin was proto nationalist and was only held back from being more Putinesque by his drink, and he was his progedy for a reason.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Seven.
Thank you. Do I have to ask the follow-up question, or shall we just take it as read?
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
Manchester United Football Club are a case study in all that is wrong with Britain. Discuss.
The manager/Prime MInister thinks they have a plan, but that is either exposed as woefully naive, or is prevented from implementation by the structure around them.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
Le Pen is (joint) favourite to win in 2027, and unlike some times in the past, I don't think the odds are wrong. Indeed, I'd have her clear favourite (albeit not by much). It's not 2002 any more and not an 82-18 country any more.
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
Labour would lose, because they wouldn't be able to resist painting Farage as far-right (which he isn’t) and it wouldn't resonate and might even backfire. Starmer would be made mincemeat by Farage in a debate.
I stick to my prognosis: Reform would fall apart in office.
The Democrats need to reach out to the kind of Red-State women that resent being told they should never be homemakers, but don't want their rights taken away.
The problem is that the incredibly binary and polarised nature of U.S. political discourse, nowadays increasingly represented by Bluesky and Twitter, and with that trend spreading here, makes all these kinds of nuances and conversations more difficult, than they should be.
I don't think that the Democrats have said "Women should never be Homemakers", so I would be interested in where you source that idea.
The "Trad Wife" influencer thing on Social Media is partly US ultra-Fundamentalism, and partly conspicuous consumption.
In order to be a "Trad-Wife" influencer, you need to be married to a wealthy man with their own significant wealth and property, as a sort of reinvented trophy wife. We see them spending hours on hobbies such as needlework, dress-making, artisanal baking etc, but not hours cleaning bathrooms or doing laundry.
30 years ago it was possible for an unskilled man working in a unionised job at the nuclear power plant to run two cars, have a detached house in a good neighbourhood, wife at home looking after 3 kids etc, but that Simpsons lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for blue collar Americans.
If you need 2 or more incomes to pay the rent, being a Trad Wife is not possible, and Trad Husbands earning enough to support such a lifestyle have gone the way of the crinoline petticoat.
Without wishing to come over all @HYUFD there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation on housing costs
1. Housing is a desirable asset 2. Housing is a scarce asset 3. Therefore housing costs will tend to increase to the maximum a family unit can afford 4. When the majority of women stayed at home the average income was X and housing costs a percentage of that 5. Women deciding to work increased housing affordability but, over time, resulted in an adjustment to the cost of housing 6. Consequently we are now in a non-Pareto equilibrium with more people having to work harder to afford the same lifestyle as previous generations had 7. There is no obvious solution: building houses in an uncontrolled fashion has non-economic costs; you don’t want to restrict the right of women to work; perhaps restrictions on access to capital to buy houses? Perhaps continued efforts to make them a less attractive investment for individuals? Perhaps restrictions on the rights of non-residents to own houses?
Except #2 is artificial.
There is no more a reason for housing to be scarce than there is for TVs, DVD players or anything else to be scarce.
There is little reason competition can't create more housing until supply and demand reach a better equilibrium, except for the fact we put hurdles in the way via our artificial planning system.
Fix #2 and the rest of your chain falls apart. There is then an obvious solution: build houses in an uncontrolled fashion, let the free market fix it. Supply and demand and let the invisible hand work.
Even then the average home would still only be affordable to 2 earner couples as most women still work full time, whereas 50 years ago the average home was affordable to a 1 earner couple as most women stayed home and were full time mothers after they had children or only worked part time after having a family
If house prices collapsed back down to where they should be instead of being artificially inflated then people would have the choice to either have only one person working, or the second person's income could be going on luxuries like holidays orfancier cars/homes etc rather than going on a necessity.
House prices are driven by affordability
Even in your scenario of unlimited housing there will always be someone who will pay more for the nicer house with the better view. And that will cascade. Houses are. It fungible assets.
(Not to mention a collapse of house prices would collapse banks and so people won’t be going on holidays or buying fancier cars in that scenario )
So what if some will pay more for a house with a nicer view? Many people just want somewhere to live.
Yes there are people who will pay more for a nicer view, while others will pay less for somewhere comfortable to live.
Just as some will pay more for a nicer car, while others will pay less for something that can do the job.
Currently people are paying more because they have to, in order to survive, not out of choice. Getting a "nicer" house is a luxury, getting any is a necessity. That is the distinction you are failing to grasp.
I’m not missing. The distinction. What I’m saying is that your utopia is an unstable equilibrium that won’t last
Why?
It lasted in the 1930s, the only reason it stopped was the war and the post-war government made the horrendous mistake of passing the town and country planning act.
It lasts in other countries with liberal regimes that let people build.
Because house prices change.
Affordability is the constraint, not the number of houses.
No, supply and demand is the constraint.
When demand exceeds supply then prices go up.
When supply exceeds demand then prices go down.
If supply exceeds demand and people spend less on a necessity, they can then choose to spend any extra income on whatever luxury suits them - whether that be a nicer home (rather than any home), or a nicer car, or nicer travel or anything else.
Rather than paying through the nose for a damp-ridden shitbox squalor because that's all that's available and its either that or homelessness.
Imagine that you wave a magic wand and an extra 50m Barrett homes suddenly materialise. How much will Buckingham Palace be worth?
Who gives a shit?
The question is how much people will be paying on their own housing costs. That would be much less with 50m extra homes on the market.
What some other homes cost is utterly irrelevant.
It all depends. A glut of housing can coexist with a lack of affordability if it doesn't meet what the market wants. Even in the UK market today there are houses that you metaphorically can't give away.
Good, there's nothing wrong with having houses that you 'can't give away' because better ones are available elsewhere. It means the ones you can't give away are inferior/too expensive/run down/in shit areas and they can be bulldozed and the area redeveloped to another purpose ratchetting up quality.
Better than people living in overcrowded, expensive slums because TINA.
Overcrowded slums are the apotheosis of a free market, resulting from the fact that the 'dwellers' are too poor to afford a nice house for themselves. Nice houses cost money and lots of people don't have much. The price of a house reflects the cost of building and maintaining it, not just the land value. Even if your libertarian anti-planning solution were to reduce the land value to zero (it won't) the rest of the cost is irreducible. Of course, we can always tax the working, productive part of the population to build nice homes for those who neither toil nor spin - a timely Christian policy.
The cost of building housing is heavily related to... the cost of housing. Both in direct labour and the cost of materials.
So if we reduce the cost of housing on the land and markup side, the construction and material cost can come down as well.
No it isn't.
I am a minor partner in a building company. Wages, wages, wages & materials. In that order. On many jobs, direct labour is more than 50% of the project cost.
Indeed. But Bart is claiming (wrongly) that the cost of labour and materials is derived from the cost of the land. The exact reverse of the actual situation. Materials in terms of bricks and concrete operate largely on a simple supply and demand basis. As demand goes up then so does the cost of the materials. To try and claim that reducing the cost of the land will reduce the cost of the materials is just stupid.
Malmesbury claimed it and I agreed with him, he's completely right.
The cost of labour is seriously inflated by the cost of housing, since people need to earn more just to keep a roof above their heads currently.
As for the cost of materials, if those materials need to be handled by people (labour) or stored anywhere (land) then its affected in the costs there too, but I agree with Malmesbury that the wages are the bigger concern that are directly affected by housing costs.
When your employees number one expense is housing, then that has an affect on your labour costs, which is problematic when that's your number one expense yourself.
Clearly the cost of labour for building is not seriously inflated by house prices given that the average wage for a skilled bricky is only £5k a year more than the overall UK average wage. And the UK average wage is almost identical to France and lower than many other European countries including Germany and the Netherlands.
Unless you believe that we should all take a substantial pay cut? In which case what is the point of having lower house prices?
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
There's always doubt, but I agree. Nothing would get out the Labour vote better than Farage leading in the polls.
I am not so sure. One is a national treasure and TV and Radio personality whilst the other is the second (after Reeves) most hated politician on the World 's foremost political betting blog.
The Democrats need to reach out to the kind of Red-State women that resent being told they should never be homemakers, but don't want their rights taken away.
The problem is that the incredibly binary and polarised nature of U.S. political discourse, nowadays increasingly represented by Bluesky and Twitter, and with that trend spreading here, makes all these kinds of nuances and conversations more difficult, than they should be.
I don't think that the Democrats have said "Women should never be Homemakers", so I would be interested in where you source that idea.
The "Trad Wife" influencer thing on Social Media is partly US ultra-Fundamentalism, and partly conspicuous consumption.
In order to be a "Trad-Wife" influencer, you need to be married to a wealthy man with their own significant wealth and property, as a sort of reinvented trophy wife. We see them spending hours on hobbies such as needlework, dress-making, artisanal baking etc, but not hours cleaning bathrooms or doing laundry.
30 years ago it was possible for an unskilled man working in a unionised job at the nuclear power plant to run two cars, have a detached house in a good neighbourhood, wife at home looking after 3 kids etc, but that Simpsons lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for blue collar Americans.
If you need 2 or more incomes to pay the rent, being a Trad Wife is not possible, and Trad Husbands earning enough to support such a lifestyle have gone the way of the crinoline petticoat.
Without wishing to come over all @HYUFD there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation on housing costs
1. Housing is a desirable asset 2. Housing is a scarce asset 3. Therefore housing costs will tend to increase to the maximum a family unit can afford 4. When the majority of women stayed at home the average income was X and housing costs a percentage of that 5. Women deciding to work increased housing affordability but, over time, resulted in an adjustment to the cost of housing 6. Consequently we are now in a non-Pareto equilibrium with more people having to work harder to afford the same lifestyle as previous generations had 7. There is no obvious solution: building houses in an uncontrolled fashion has non-economic costs; you don’t want to restrict the right of women to work; perhaps restrictions on access to capital to buy houses? Perhaps continued efforts to make them a less attractive investment for individuals? Perhaps restrictions on the rights of non-residents to own houses?
Except #2 is artificial.
There is no more a reason for housing to be scarce than there is for TVs, DVD players or anything else to be scarce.
There is little reason competition can't create more housing until supply and demand reach a better equilibrium, except for the fact we put hurdles in the way via our artificial planning system.
Fix #2 and the rest of your chain falls apart. There is then an obvious solution: build houses in an uncontrolled fashion, let the free market fix it. Supply and demand and let the invisible hand work.
Even then the average home would still only be affordable to 2 earner couples as most women still work full time, whereas 50 years ago the average home was affordable to a 1 earner couple as most women stayed home and were full time mothers after they had children or only worked part time after having a family
If house prices collapsed back down to where they should be instead of being artificially inflated then people would have the choice to either have only one person working, or the second person's income could be going on luxuries like holidays orfancier cars/homes etc rather than going on a necessity.
House prices are driven by affordability
Even in your scenario of unlimited housing there will always be someone who will pay more for the nicer house with the better view. And that will cascade. Houses are. It fungible assets.
(Not to mention a collapse of house prices would collapse banks and so people won’t be going on holidays or buying fancier cars in that scenario )
So what if some will pay more for a house with a nicer view? Many people just want somewhere to live.
Yes there are people who will pay more for a nicer view, while others will pay less for somewhere comfortable to live.
Just as some will pay more for a nicer car, while others will pay less for something that can do the job.
Currently people are paying more because they have to, in order to survive, not out of choice. Getting a "nicer" house is a luxury, getting any is a necessity. That is the distinction you are failing to grasp.
I’m not missing. The distinction. What I’m saying is that your utopia is an unstable equilibrium that won’t last
Why?
It lasted in the 1930s, the only reason it stopped was the war and the post-war government made the horrendous mistake of passing the town and country planning act.
It lasts in other countries with liberal regimes that let people build.
Because house prices change.
Affordability is the constraint, not the number of houses.
No, supply and demand is the constraint.
When demand exceeds supply then prices go up.
When supply exceeds demand then prices go down.
If supply exceeds demand and people spend less on a necessity, they can then choose to spend any extra income on whatever luxury suits them - whether that be a nicer home (rather than any home), or a nicer car, or nicer travel or anything else.
Rather than paying through the nose for a damp-ridden shitbox squalor because that's all that's available and its either that or homelessness.
Imagine that you wave a magic wand and an extra 50m Barrett homes suddenly materialise. How much will Buckingham Palace be worth?
Who gives a shit?
The question is how much people will be paying on their own housing costs. That would be much less with 50m extra homes on the market.
What some other homes cost is utterly irrelevant.
It all depends. A glut of housing can coexist with a lack of affordability if it doesn't meet what the market wants. Even in the UK market today there are houses that you metaphorically can't give away.
Good, there's nothing wrong with having houses that you 'can't give away' because better ones are available elsewhere. It means the ones you can't give away are inferior/too expensive/run down/in shit areas and they can be bulldozed and the area redeveloped to another purpose ratchetting up quality.
Better than people living in overcrowded, expensive slums because TINA.
Overcrowded slums are the apotheosis of a free market, resulting from the fact that the 'dwellers' are too poor to afford a nice house for themselves. Nice houses cost money and lots of people don't have much. The price of a house reflects the cost of building and maintaining it, not just the land value. Even if your libertarian anti-planning solution were to reduce the land value to zero (it won't) the rest of the cost is irreducible. Of course, we can always tax the working, productive part of the population to build nice homes for those who neither toil nor spin - a timely Christian policy.
The cost of building housing is heavily related to... the cost of housing. Both in direct labour and the cost of materials.
So if we reduce the cost of housing on the land and markup side, the construction and material cost can come down as well.
No it isn't.
I am a minor partner in a building company. Wages, wages, wages & materials. In that order. On many jobs, direct labour is more than 50% of the project cost.
The thing is our disastrous planning system does not just stymie small building developers (it is of course by far the number one issue blighting small developers according to the small developers themselves) but it leaves a toxic legacy for all small businesses who rely upon having either anybody working for them, or needing a property to work out of themselves.
Since our chronic housing shortage does not just inflate massively the amount needed to pay on labour just to keep people with a roof above their heads, but it also massively inflates commercial property prices.
More of Bart's ill informed lunatic ideas. He is like a stuck record, unable to change his tune in spite of being comprehensively wrong on the subject at every turn.
You're the ill informed one pretending that small developers aren't stymied by the planning system when the small developers themselves state that planning is the number one problem they face.
Almost as if you won't entertain anything that challenges your worldview.
Nope, as I said before the main complaint from small developers is the inability to get finance. But of course you got upset that I was actually using what small developers said rather than just believing your lunatic bullshit about planning.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
The Democrats need to reach out to the kind of Red-State women that resent being told they should never be homemakers, but don't want their rights taken away.
The problem is that the incredibly binary and polarised nature of U.S. political discourse, nowadays increasingly represented by Bluesky and Twitter, and with that trend spreading here, makes all these kinds of nuances and conversations more difficult, than they should be.
I don't think that the Democrats have said "Women should never be Homemakers", so I would be interested in where you source that idea.
The "Trad Wife" influencer thing on Social Media is partly US ultra-Fundamentalism, and partly conspicuous consumption.
In order to be a "Trad-Wife" influencer, you need to be married to a wealthy man with their own significant wealth and property, as a sort of reinvented trophy wife. We see them spending hours on hobbies such as needlework, dress-making, artisanal baking etc, but not hours cleaning bathrooms or doing laundry.
30 years ago it was possible for an unskilled man working in a unionised job at the nuclear power plant to run two cars, have a detached house in a good neighbourhood, wife at home looking after 3 kids etc, but that Simpsons lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for blue collar Americans.
If you need 2 or more incomes to pay the rent, being a Trad Wife is not possible, and Trad Husbands earning enough to support such a lifestyle have gone the way of the crinoline petticoat.
Without wishing to come over all @HYUFD there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation on housing costs
1. Housing is a desirable asset 2. Housing is a scarce asset 3. Therefore housing costs will tend to increase to the maximum a family unit can afford 4. When the majority of women stayed at home the average income was X and housing costs a percentage of that 5. Women deciding to work increased housing affordability but, over time, resulted in an adjustment to the cost of housing 6. Consequently we are now in a non-Pareto equilibrium with more people having to work harder to afford the same lifestyle as previous generations had 7. There is no obvious solution: building houses in an uncontrolled fashion has non-economic costs; you don’t want to restrict the right of women to work; perhaps restrictions on access to capital to buy houses? Perhaps continued efforts to make them a less attractive investment for individuals? Perhaps restrictions on the rights of non-residents to own houses?
Except #2 is artificial.
There is no more a reason for housing to be scarce than there is for TVs, DVD players or anything else to be scarce.
There is little reason competition can't create more housing until supply and demand reach a better equilibrium, except for the fact we put hurdles in the way via our artificial planning system.
Fix #2 and the rest of your chain falls apart. There is then an obvious solution: build houses in an uncontrolled fashion, let the free market fix it. Supply and demand and let the invisible hand work.
Even then the average home would still only be affordable to 2 earner couples as most women still work full time, whereas 50 years ago the average home was affordable to a 1 earner couple as most women stayed home and were full time mothers after they had children or only worked part time after having a family
If house prices collapsed back down to where they should be instead of being artificially inflated then people would have the choice to either have only one person working, or the second person's income could be going on luxuries like holidays orfancier cars/homes etc rather than going on a necessity.
House prices are driven by affordability
Even in your scenario of unlimited housing there will always be someone who will pay more for the nicer house with the better view. And that will cascade. Houses are. It fungible assets.
(Not to mention a collapse of house prices would collapse banks and so people won’t be going on holidays or buying fancier cars in that scenario )
So what if some will pay more for a house with a nicer view? Many people just want somewhere to live.
Yes there are people who will pay more for a nicer view, while others will pay less for somewhere comfortable to live.
Just as some will pay more for a nicer car, while others will pay less for something that can do the job.
Currently people are paying more because they have to, in order to survive, not out of choice. Getting a "nicer" house is a luxury, getting any is a necessity. That is the distinction you are failing to grasp.
I’m not missing. The distinction. What I’m saying is that your utopia is an unstable equilibrium that won’t last
Why?
It lasted in the 1930s, the only reason it stopped was the war and the post-war government made the horrendous mistake of passing the town and country planning act.
It lasts in other countries with liberal regimes that let people build.
Because house prices change.
Affordability is the constraint, not the number of houses.
No, supply and demand is the constraint.
When demand exceeds supply then prices go up.
When supply exceeds demand then prices go down.
If supply exceeds demand and people spend less on a necessity, they can then choose to spend any extra income on whatever luxury suits them - whether that be a nicer home (rather than any home), or a nicer car, or nicer travel or anything else.
Rather than paying through the nose for a damp-ridden shitbox squalor because that's all that's available and its either that or homelessness.
Imagine that you wave a magic wand and an extra 50m Barrett homes suddenly materialise. How much will Buckingham Palace be worth?
Who gives a shit?
The question is how much people will be paying on their own housing costs. That would be much less with 50m extra homes on the market.
What some other homes cost is utterly irrelevant.
It all depends. A glut of housing can coexist with a lack of affordability if it doesn't meet what the market wants. Even in the UK market today there are houses that you metaphorically can't give away.
Good, there's nothing wrong with having houses that you 'can't give away' because better ones are available elsewhere. It means the ones you can't give away are inferior/too expensive/run down/in shit areas and they can be bulldozed and the area redeveloped to another purpose ratchetting up quality.
Better than people living in overcrowded, expensive slums because TINA.
Overcrowded slums are the apotheosis of a free market, resulting from the fact that the 'dwellers' are too poor to afford a nice house for themselves. Nice houses cost money and lots of people don't have much. The price of a house reflects the cost of building and maintaining it, not just the land value. Even if your libertarian anti-planning solution were to reduce the land value to zero (it won't) the rest of the cost is irreducible. Of course, we can always tax the working, productive part of the population to build nice homes for those who neither toil nor spin - a timely Christian policy.
The cost of building housing is heavily related to... the cost of housing. Both in direct labour and the cost of materials.
So if we reduce the cost of housing on the land and markup side, the construction and material cost can come down as well.
No it isn't.
I am a minor partner in a building company. Wages, wages, wages & materials. In that order. On many jobs, direct labour is more than 50% of the project cost.
No doubt there's more to it. but it seems to me that your Wages, wages, and wages costs are explained by a chap working, one watching him, and one supervising. I've been entertaining this theory for many years - and where you can be reasonably sure you get the whole picture - streetworks and the like it's as I say, or slightly more watching and less doing on average.
Not on the sites we work. Skilled trades have rocketed in cost. Because the ungrateful sparkies etc. refuse to sleep in garden sheds. Some of them even want a bathroom for sole use by them and their family.
But what I observe isn't untrue is it?
Massive inefficiency is common on bigger sites. Jobs stopped because of a single tool missing!
They tend to use larger numbers of cheaper (lower skilled people). Because managers get all upset by wages going up. But not by hiring lots of people to manage....
In reality, you want fewer, better skilled people.
So what's happening whereby we have in our streetworks perhaps 200% overmanning?
(I do recognise that digging holes in streets is very hard work, and apparent loafing around may just be recovering)
Digging holes shouldn't be done by hand - reserve that for clearance around delicate stuff.
Runs on electricity. Here it is about to be lowered into a basement
Well get yourself to London and do the streetworks.
I actually fixed a couple of pavement slabs with a neighbour (builder), over Christmas break.
Hi-Viz, some workman's gear and some cones. No one challenged us.
Would it be presuming too much on our nascent friendship then to ask you to pay some attention to the whole area?
It's part of an evil plan - we create a parallel state that works, then gradually take over the county.
Once you control all the pavements, then even the PM can't get out of No. 10.
{Laughs in Dr Evil}
Guerilla gardening is a thing, too.
There's a local wildlife site which has been mismanaged by the council - it is supposed to be a remnant of lowland heath with an interesting and locally rare species on it. Most of the site was destroyed to build a leisure centre in the 1980 but a tiny piece remains.
All they needed to do was strim it once a year at the right height, and they couldn't even manage that.
I am very very tempted to the job myself with a brushcutter (I do have a ticket) and some official looking clothing but it is a bit public so it might have to be hand tools at dawn.
Jobs like that you'll probably get more attention if you do it at dawn.
Do it like you belong there and people won't look twice.
You need some friends to stand around in work clothes, with really, really big coffees.
Be careful - time of year has a huge effect on the damage or benefit done to the vegetation and ecology.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
It is up to Russia to decide what comes next for Russia. Trying to determine that for them would just add to that paranoia about the West, and is probably unknowable anyway.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Yes, I agree. And one has to understand Russian psychology: the route to achieving that is to work with them to get them to recognise they can be a great country for positive reasons following the path you describe, not giving them an almighty punishment fuck which will end up with exactly the same (or worse) results as it did post the end of the Cold War.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
We could send them Liz. Imagine what they could do with all that growth. As I remember Mrs.Thatcher was popular in Gorbachev-era Russia. And Liz is her true successor - in both her and the Telegraphs fevered minds.
Gorbachev is probably as good as it gets in Russia.
Yeltsin was proto nationalist and was only held back from being more Putinesque by his drink, and he was his progedy for a reason.
Yeltsin was a classic chancer-politician who liked power and liked to be popular. He had no fixed ideology and brought down the USSR from within solely so that he could run Russia as a state for himself (which was probably a personal strategic mistake as he was in a position to take over from Gorbachev and could have held on to most of the country).
Yeltsin went through any number of PMs and Putin was foisted on him by a KGB-FSB clique who were rightly worried that they may lose what precarious grip on power they retained. But they were lucky the music stopped when Putin was in the hot-seat; there was no guarantee of that (Chechen wars and staged apartment bombings notwithstanding).
But what comes next can be impossible to predict. Who knows what the second rank would do if allowed power. Putin was not obviously a new dictator in 2000. In fact he looked out of his depth and the Oligarchy looked set to retain its strong share of power. Who would have predicted that after Stalin's even greater dictatorship, a communal and mutually agreed sharing of power would emerge among the elite? Or that after Franco, Juan Carlos - who held office through the autocratic era - would restore democracy?
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
It's no wonder that Brexit has worked out so badly* with that clown in charge.
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
Your Dad is very wise.
You can price substructures and superstructures (the unit costs of the materials) because they are surveyable quantities and can be pre-purchased and stored. Labour on top is more of a challenge but the sequence should be largely predictable.
Civils and MEH works can vary site to site. All residential building projects are a microcosm of how very large infrastructure projects can go wrong, usually because the risk simply hasn't been properly accounted for and the buck always stops with the client.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Yes, I agree. And one has to understand Russian psychology: the route to achieving that is to work with them to get them to recognise they can be a great country for positive reasons following the path you describe, not giving them an almighty punishment fuck which will end up with exactly the same (or worse) results as it did post the end of the Cold War.
One of the myths (I think coming from Russia itself) is that we (the west) gave them an 'almighty punishment fuck' after 1991. As far as I can tell, that is not true. Large amounts of money were directly and indirectly thrown at Russia, in part because we were afraid of it disintegrating. We held out a hand of friendship. And I think it nearly worked.
The Democrats need to reach out to the kind of Red-State women that resent being told they should never be homemakers, but don't want their rights taken away.
The problem is that the incredibly binary and polarised nature of U.S. political discourse, nowadays increasingly represented by Bluesky and Twitter, and with that trend spreading here, makes all these kinds of nuances and conversations more difficult, than they should be.
I don't think that the Democrats have said "Women should never be Homemakers", so I would be interested in where you source that idea.
The "Trad Wife" influencer thing on Social Media is partly US ultra-Fundamentalism, and partly conspicuous consumption.
In order to be a "Trad-Wife" influencer, you need to be married to a wealthy man with their own significant wealth and property, as a sort of reinvented trophy wife. We see them spending hours on hobbies such as needlework, dress-making, artisanal baking etc, but not hours cleaning bathrooms or doing laundry.
30 years ago it was possible for an unskilled man working in a unionised job at the nuclear power plant to run two cars, have a detached house in a good neighbourhood, wife at home looking after 3 kids etc, but that Simpsons lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for blue collar Americans.
If you need 2 or more incomes to pay the rent, being a Trad Wife is not possible, and Trad Husbands earning enough to support such a lifestyle have gone the way of the crinoline petticoat.
Without wishing to come over all @HYUFD there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation on housing costs
1. Housing is a desirable asset 2. Housing is a scarce asset 3. Therefore housing costs will tend to increase to the maximum a family unit can afford 4. When the majority of women stayed at home the average income was X and housing costs a percentage of that 5. Women deciding to work increased housing affordability but, over time, resulted in an adjustment to the cost of housing 6. Consequently we are now in a non-Pareto equilibrium with more people having to work harder to afford the same lifestyle as previous generations had 7. There is no obvious solution: building houses in an uncontrolled fashion has non-economic costs; you don’t want to restrict the right of women to work; perhaps restrictions on access to capital to buy houses? Perhaps continued efforts to make them a less attractive investment for individuals? Perhaps restrictions on the rights of non-residents to own houses?
Except #2 is artificial.
There is no more a reason for housing to be scarce than there is for TVs, DVD players or anything else to be scarce.
There is little reason competition can't create more housing until supply and demand reach a better equilibrium, except for the fact we put hurdles in the way via our artificial planning system.
Fix #2 and the rest of your chain falls apart. There is then an obvious solution: build houses in an uncontrolled fashion, let the free market fix it. Supply and demand and let the invisible hand work.
Even then the average home would still only be affordable to 2 earner couples as most women still work full time, whereas 50 years ago the average home was affordable to a 1 earner couple as most women stayed home and were full time mothers after they had children or only worked part time after having a family
If house prices collapsed back down to where they should be instead of being artificially inflated then people would have the choice to either have only one person working, or the second person's income could be going on luxuries like holidays orfancier cars/homes etc rather than going on a necessity.
House prices are driven by affordability
Even in your scenario of unlimited housing there will always be someone who will pay more for the nicer house with the better view. And that will cascade. Houses are. It fungible assets.
(Not to mention a collapse of house prices would collapse banks and so people won’t be going on holidays or buying fancier cars in that scenario )
So what if some will pay more for a house with a nicer view? Many people just want somewhere to live.
Yes there are people who will pay more for a nicer view, while others will pay less for somewhere comfortable to live.
Just as some will pay more for a nicer car, while others will pay less for something that can do the job.
Currently people are paying more because they have to, in order to survive, not out of choice. Getting a "nicer" house is a luxury, getting any is a necessity. That is the distinction you are failing to grasp.
I’m not missing. The distinction. What I’m saying is that your utopia is an unstable equilibrium that won’t last
Why?
It lasted in the 1930s, the only reason it stopped was the war and the post-war government made the horrendous mistake of passing the town and country planning act.
It lasts in other countries with liberal regimes that let people build.
Because house prices change.
Affordability is the constraint, not the number of houses.
No, supply and demand is the constraint.
When demand exceeds supply then prices go up.
When supply exceeds demand then prices go down.
If supply exceeds demand and people spend less on a necessity, they can then choose to spend any extra income on whatever luxury suits them - whether that be a nicer home (rather than any home), or a nicer car, or nicer travel or anything else.
Rather than paying through the nose for a damp-ridden shitbox squalor because that's all that's available and its either that or homelessness.
Imagine that you wave a magic wand and an extra 50m Barrett homes suddenly materialise. How much will Buckingham Palace be worth?
Who gives a shit?
The question is how much people will be paying on their own housing costs. That would be much less with 50m extra homes on the market.
What some other homes cost is utterly irrelevant.
It all depends. A glut of housing can coexist with a lack of affordability if it doesn't meet what the market wants. Even in the UK market today there are houses that you metaphorically can't give away.
Good, there's nothing wrong with having houses that you 'can't give away' because better ones are available elsewhere. It means the ones you can't give away are inferior/too expensive/run down/in shit areas and they can be bulldozed and the area redeveloped to another purpose ratchetting up quality.
Better than people living in overcrowded, expensive slums because TINA.
Overcrowded slums are the apotheosis of a free market, resulting from the fact that the 'dwellers' are too poor to afford a nice house for themselves. Nice houses cost money and lots of people don't have much. The price of a house reflects the cost of building and maintaining it, not just the land value. Even if your libertarian anti-planning solution were to reduce the land value to zero (it won't) the rest of the cost is irreducible. Of course, we can always tax the working, productive part of the population to build nice homes for those who neither toil nor spin - a timely Christian policy.
The cost of building housing is heavily related to... the cost of housing. Both in direct labour and the cost of materials.
So if we reduce the cost of housing on the land and markup side, the construction and material cost can come down as well.
No it isn't.
I am a minor partner in a building company. Wages, wages, wages & materials. In that order. On many jobs, direct labour is more than 50% of the project cost.
The thing is our disastrous planning system does not just stymie small building developers (it is of course by far the number one issue blighting small developers according to the small developers themselves) but it leaves a toxic legacy for all small businesses who rely upon having either anybody working for them, or needing a property to work out of themselves.
Since our chronic housing shortage does not just inflate massively the amount needed to pay on labour just to keep people with a roof above their heads, but it also massively inflates commercial property prices.
More of Bart's ill informed lunatic ideas. He is like a stuck record, unable to change his tune in spite of being comprehensively wrong on the subject at every turn.
You're the ill informed one pretending that small developers aren't stymied by the planning system when the small developers themselves state that planning is the number one problem they face.
Almost as if you won't entertain anything that challenges your worldview.
Nope, as I said before the main complaint from small developers is the inability to get finance. But of course you got upset that I was actually using what small developers said rather than just believing your lunatic bullshit about planning.
And as the small developers have said themselves, you're wrong.
"For the fifth consecutive year, planning continues to be the largest obstacle to delivery"
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
Your Dad is very wise.
You can price substructures and superstructures (the unit costs of the materials) because they are surveyable quantities and can be pre-purchased and stored. Labour on top is more of a challenge but the sequence should be largely predictable.
Civils and MEH works can vary site to site. All residential building projects are a microcosm of how very large infrastructure projects can go wrong, usually because the risk simply hasn't been properly accounted for and the buck always stops with the client.
I wanted to go into tunnelling, where most of the money is spent underground.
(I am still really, really fascinated with the subject. In an alternate universe, I'd be working on a tunnel somewhere in the world.)
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
We could send them Liz. Imagine what they could do with all that growth. As I remember Mrs.Thatcher was popular in Gorbachev-era Russia. And Liz is her true successor - in both her and the Telegraphs fevered minds.
Gorbachev is probably as good as it gets in Russia.
Yeltsin was proto nationalist and was only held back from being more Putinesque by his drink, and he was his progedy for a reason.
Yeltsin was a classic chancer-politician who liked power and liked to be popular. He had no fixed ideology and brought down the USSR from within solely so that he could run Russia as a state for himself (which was probably a personal strategic mistake as he was in a position to take over from Gorbachev and could have held on to most of the country).
Yeltsin went through any number of PMs and Putin was foisted on him by a KGB-FSB clique who were rightly worried that they may lose what precarious grip on power they retained. But they were lucky the music stopped when Putin was in the hot-seat; there was no guarantee of that (Chechen wars and staged apartment bombings notwithstanding).
But what comes next can be impossible to predict. Who knows what the second rank would do if allowed power. Putin was not obviously a new dictator in 2000. In fact he looked out of his depth and the Oligarchy looked set to retain its strong share of power. Who would have predicted that after Stalin's even greater dictatorship, a communal and mutually agreed sharing of power would emerge among the elite? Or that after Franco, Juan Carlos - who held office through the autocratic era - would restore democracy?
Yes, it's possible that a post Putin Russia surprises on the upside. But, I'm not especially hopeful of that based on the evidence before us, rather than wishful thinking. He's killed every possible moderate contender, and opposition there is none outside Moscow and St Petersburg - which Western media is hopelessly bias in focusing upon.
I suppose someone new could emerge who's wise and strong enough to lead Russia into a brave new age. But I'd assess that as a 15% shot.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
Le Pen is (joint) favourite to win in 2027, and unlike some times in the past, I don't think the odds are wrong. Indeed, I'd have her clear favourite (albeit not by much). It's not 2002 any more and not an 82-18 country any more.
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
I think that once you establish yourself as the hegemonic party, on one side of other of the political spectrum, you are almost bound to form a government, due to the swing of the pendulum.
Hence my 1924 example. It was a big Tory win, but Labour increased their vote share, and almost wiped out the Liberals in urban and mining constituencies. Once the Tories became unpopular, Labour was bound to get most of the anti-Tory vote.
RN are in the same place, more or less, as Labour in 1924. They’ve eclipsed all rivals on the French Right.
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
I was once involved in a major development for my agency - fortunately at the latter end of the project. They separated out the preparation of a huge hole in the ground and the concrete pouring for the basic foundations, from the actual building. P|robably a year between them, but I imagine it saved on any worries in a complex urban site going back centuries with umpteen old wells, rubbish pits and foundations.
In Berwick-uon-Tweed, there's a fine street of houses near the barracks - obviously the sort of place the officers liked to live. Sone very nice interiors too if you are lucky and pass when work is being done. But oh, the subsidence on some ... I can't help noticing that there was an abortive attempt at a ?C16 star fortification in that very area. The ditches not properly compacted?
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
Your Dad is very wise.
You can price substructures and superstructures (the unit costs of the materials) because they are surveyable quantities and can be pre-purchased and stored. Labour on top is more of a challenge but the sequence should be largely predictable.
Civils and MEH works can vary site to site. All residential building projects are a microcosm of how very large infrastructure projects can go wrong, usually because the risk simply hasn't been properly accounted for and the buck always stops with the client.
I wanted to go into tunnelling, where most of the money is spent underground.
(I am still really, really fascinated with the subject. In an alternate universe, I'd be working on a tunnel somewhere in the world.)
HS2 is your friend!
I had a cracking time on the TBMs when the Elizabeth Line was being bored between Liverpool St and Whitechapel. I'll never forget that experience, the slurry that came out in droves on the conveyors nor how quickly the tunnel segments were laid.
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
Your Dad is very wise.
You can price substructures and superstructures (the unit costs of the materials) because they are surveyable quantities and can be pre-purchased and stored. Labour on top is more of a challenge but the sequence should be largely predictable.
Civils and MEH works can vary site to site. All residential building projects are a microcosm of how very large infrastructure projects can go wrong, usually because the risk simply hasn't been properly accounted for and the buck always stops with the client.
I wanted to go into tunnelling, where most of the money is spent underground.
(I am still really, really fascinated with the subject. In an alternate universe, I'd be working on a tunnel somewhere in the world.)
HS2 is your friend!
I had a cracking time on the TBMs when the Elizabeth Line was being bored between Liverpool St and Whitechapel. I'll never forget that experience, the slurry that came out in droves on the conveyors nor how quickly the tunnel segments were laid.
Channelling your Marc Brunel ... I never saw that up front (but a visit to a NATM drill and spray concrete over at once was almost as good).
@viewcode If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
My dad was mainly in demolition and groundworks. He said you could never accurately price or estimate any job before you got out of the ground. Even connection to services could provide very costly issues. And I fear many mass builders of houses skimp on groundworks - as we have recently seen in a new development in Cambridge.
Your Dad is very wise.
You can price substructures and superstructures (the unit costs of the materials) because they are surveyable quantities and can be pre-purchased and stored. Labour on top is more of a challenge but the sequence should be largely predictable.
Civils and MEH works can vary site to site. All residential building projects are a microcosm of how very large infrastructure projects can go wrong, usually because the risk simply hasn't been properly accounted for and the buck always stops with the client.
I wanted to go into tunnelling, where most of the money is spent underground.
(I am still really, really fascinated with the subject. In an alternate universe, I'd be working on a tunnel somewhere in the world.)
Bring along some bats and HS2 will give you a job.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Yes, I agree. And one has to understand Russian psychology: the route to achieving that is to work with them to get them to recognise they can be a great country for positive reasons following the path you describe, not giving them an almighty punishment fuck which will end up with exactly the same (or worse) results as it did post the end of the Cold War.
One of the myths (I think coming from Russia itself) is that we (the west) gave them an 'almighty punishment fuck' after 1991. As far as I can tell, that is not true. Large amounts of money were directly and indirectly thrown at Russia, in part because we were afraid of it disintegrating. We held out a hand of friendship. And I think it nearly worked.
It's always difficult to predict collapses of power. We saw in Syria that Assad collapsed slowly then very quickly. We saw it with the collapse of our own Empire too.
It was the same in the Gorbachov/Yeltsin era. Once things started cracking in the USSR the various republics declared independence very quickly. While Putin may mock their nationalism, it is obvious from Ukraine that even closely related people often speaking the same language do not hunger for Russian rule.
If the Putin regime does collapse, it is most likely into another gangster state ruled by oligarchs. It's not impossible that something more radical could emerge, but that is unlikely to be democracy. Most countries take some time before they see the benefits of democracy.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Between £1500 and £4000 per sqm, depending on a lot of things. Most particularly, how much you are intending to do yourself, and spec level, and region. £2500 to £3500 is probably nearer.
There are a number of OK cost estimating sites online, or see if one of your advisers has a copy of SPONS.
But 3.5 m x 10 m is a really strange proportion with a very high SA:V ratio, and much more heat loss. and all your rooms with 3 outside walls. 7m x 7m or 6m x 8m would give you 30-50% more floor area for the same amount of wall.
With 30cm thick walls (which may not be achievable with conventional techniques - depending on which conventional techniques you mean) techniques you will end up with very narrow rooms under 9ft wide.
On those dimensions I would be looking at something very simple, like single thickness no cavity block and the insulation on the outside, or a turnkey timber frame.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
Le Pen is (joint) favourite to win in 2027, and unlike some times in the past, I don't think the odds are wrong. Indeed, I'd have her clear favourite (albeit not by much). It's not 2002 any more and not an 82-18 country any more.
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
I think that once you establish yourself as the hegemonic party, on one side of other of the political spectrum, you are almost bound to form a government, due to the swing of the pendulum.
Hence my 1924 example. It was a big Tory win, but Labour increased their vote share, and almost wiped out the Liberals in urban and mining constituencies. Once the Tories became unpopular, Labour was bound to get most of the anti-Tory vote.
RN are in the same place, more or less, as Labour in 1924. They’ve eclipsed all rivals on the French Right.
I would place Reform as more like RN twenty years ago, and Farage hasn't got 20 years.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Emotions matter. Countries that lose wars - particularly those that started the war in question, unprovoked and for territorial gain - pay a price. That's always been the case historically and I see no reason to change that. It used to be in territory however other than a restoration of the 1991 boundaries I'd be content there. But the hundreds of billions that Russia has frozen can go to Ukraine.
However, if Russia is to lose then the regime will almost fall, not least because the latter may well be necessary to produce the former. As such, we can't worry excessively about what comes next.
OK, PB Brains Trust, how much would it cost to build a two storey house, 3.5metres by 10metres, bathroom and bedroom upstairs, living room and kitchen downstairs.
The points are as follows:
Assume the land has been purchased and detailed planning permission has been granted.
Assume conventional building techniques: bricks and mortar for the walls, tiles for the roof.
Do not include the cost of fitting out the bathroom/kitchen as that's variable.
Between £1500 and £4000 per sqm, depending on a lot of things. Most particularly, how much you are intending to do yourself, and spec level, and region. £2500 to £3500 is probably nearer.
There are a number of OK cost estimating sites online, or see if one of your advisers has a copy of SPONS.
But 3.5 m x 10 m is a really strange proportion with a very high SA:V ratio, and much more heat loss. and all your rooms with 3 outside walls. 7m x 7m or 6m x 8m would give you 30-50% more floor area for the same amount of wall.
With 30cm thick walls (which may not be achievable with conventional techniques - depending on which conventional techniques you mean) techniques you will end up with very narrow rooms under 9ft wide.
On those dimensions I would be looking at something very simple, like single thickness no cavity block and the insulation on the outside, or a turnkey timber frame.
It sounds like the plot of a fairly narrow terraced house. Obviously cheaper to do the whole terrace and split it.
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Funny as in peculiar.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
There's always doubt, but I agree. Nothing would get out the Labour vote better than Farage leading in the polls.
Not if the Labour voters are voting for him
And on Man Utd, their display is abject beyond belief and unless they bring in new signings in January they could end up in a relegation battle
'Is there a fire drill.... Is there a fire drill....'
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
How soon before ManU contact Leicester for RVN? Not that his record is great with us(though at least entertaining) but it was the best bit of the ManU season.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
Le Pen is (joint) favourite to win in 2027, and unlike some times in the past, I don't think the odds are wrong. Indeed, I'd have her clear favourite (albeit not by much). It's not 2002 any more and not an 82-18 country any more.
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
I think that once you establish yourself as the hegemonic party, on one side of other of the political spectrum, you are almost bound to form a government, due to the swing of the pendulum.
Hence my 1924 example. It was a big Tory win, but Labour increased their vote share, and almost wiped out the Liberals in urban and mining constituencies. Once the Tories became unpopular, Labour was bound to get most of the anti-Tory vote.
RN are in the same place, more or less, as Labour in 1924. They’ve eclipsed all rivals on the French Right.
I don't think it's quite the same as Macron is neither left nor right - or at least, tries not to be. Hence his three-bloc problem in parliament.
But that may play into Le Pen's hands anyway if she ends up against Melenchon or similar in the run-off.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Funny as in peculiar.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
The EU have bought back this concept in the latest negotiations - they want the five-year transitional fishing arrangements extended permanently - and claiming it as a red line. Hopefully Starmer will be as robust.
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
How soon before ManU contact Leicester for RVN? Not that his record is great with us(though at least entertaining) but it was the best bit of the ManU season.
How long before Anorim gets sacked?
5 defeats from first 8 games, joint worst in United's entire history.
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Yes, I agree. And one has to understand Russian psychology: the route to achieving that is to work with them to get them to recognise they can be a great country for positive reasons following the path you describe, not giving them an almighty punishment fuck which will end up with exactly the same (or worse) results as it did post the end of the Cold War.
One of the myths (I think coming from Russia itself) is that we (the west) gave them an 'almighty punishment fuck' after 1991. As far as I can tell, that is not true. Large amounts of money were directly and indirectly thrown at Russia, in part because we were afraid of it disintegrating. We held out a hand of friendship. And I think it nearly worked.
It's always difficult to predict collapses of power. We saw in Syria that Assad collapsed slowly then very quickly. We saw it with the collapse of our own Empire too.
It was the same in the Gorbachov/Yeltsin era. Once things started cracking in the USSR the various republics declared independence very quickly. While Putin may mock their nationalism, it is obvious from Ukraine that even closely related people often speaking the same language do not hunger for Russian rule.
If the Putin regime does collapse, it is most likely into another gangster state ruled by oligarchs. It's not impossible that something more radical could emerge, but that is unlikely to be democracy. Most countries take some time before they see the benefits of democracy.
Though even a kleptocracy is likely to be an improvement on a kleptocracy with a KGB-nostalgic at its head.
Still pretty terrible for Russians, but all these wars and foreign destabilisings get in the way of honest theft.
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
How soon before ManU contact Leicester for RVN? Not that his record is great with us(though at least entertaining) but it was the best bit of the ManU season.
There are many parts to this failure and tonight Fernandes red card together with Ugarta's ban did cause issues but the team selection was poor
Far too many players are either past it or hopelessly useless that a reconstruction is inevitable and it won't be quick
They may have a relegation fight but I expect Amorin will survive
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Yes, I agree. And one has to understand Russian psychology: the route to achieving that is to work with them to get them to recognise they can be a great country for positive reasons following the path you describe, not giving them an almighty punishment fuck which will end up with exactly the same (or worse) results as it did post the end of the Cold War.
One of the myths (I think coming from Russia itself) is that we (the west) gave them an 'almighty punishment fuck' after 1991. As far as I can tell, that is not true. Large amounts of money were directly and indirectly thrown at Russia, in part because we were afraid of it disintegrating. We held out a hand of friendship. And I think it nearly worked.
It's always difficult to predict collapses of power. We saw in Syria that Assad collapsed slowly then very quickly. We saw it with the collapse of our own Empire too.
It was the same in the Gorbachov/Yeltsin era. Once things started cracking in the USSR the various republics declared independence very quickly. While Putin may mock their nationalism, it is obvious from Ukraine that even closely related people often speaking the same language do not hunger for Russian rule.
If the Putin regime does collapse, it is most likely into another gangster state ruled by oligarchs. It's not impossible that something more radical could emerge, but that is unlikely to be democracy. Most countries take some time before they see the benefits of democracy.
Though even a kleptocracy is likely to be an improvement on a kleptocracy with a KGB-nostalgic at its head.
Still pretty terrible for Russians, but all these wars and foreign destabilisings get in the way of honest theft.
The smaller that kleptocracy can become, the better. Ideally a radius of a thousand or so kilometres from Moscow, and let the rest of the empire decolonise.
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
How soon before ManU contact Leicester for RVN? Not that his record is great with us(though at least entertaining) but it was the best bit of the ManU season.
How long before Anorim gets sacked?
5 defeats from first 8 games, joint worst in United's entire history.
He inherited a failed team and management so I doubt anyone else would improve it at present
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Funny as in peculiar.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
The EU have bought back this concept in the latest negotiations - they want the five-year transitional fishing arrangements extended permanently - and claiming it as a red line. Hopefully Starmer will be as robust.
Points at the chagos negotiation....starmer will be less robust than a barrat home
Trump has an opportunity to bring Russia to heel - simply by saying he will continue supporting Ukraine. Putin's strategy has been to use all his men and material to get him to January 2025 in the expectation of a political reset. If that doesn't come about, then he cannot continue as he has. As well as a military at breaking point, Putin has an economy that has been writing cheques it cannot cash. It's collapse could be rapid - and spectacular.
If there's a chance that Russia will collapse then better to let it do so. Huge risks either way, but an organised flailing about is probably better for others than an unorganised one.
Hmm. Not sure about how good it thing it would be for a nuclear armed power with well north of 100 million people collapsing.
Well, it's certainly not a good thing for a nuclear armed power to be going round meddling in other countries affairs and cutting undersea power and internet cables.
Yet here we are.
Sure, but a Russia taken over by a mafia group, ultra-nationalists, terrorists or collapsing in chaos with a civil war and nukes sold to the highest bidder isn't good news either. And, in fact, could be even worse.
We shouldn't like our schadenfreude blind our imaginations to the fact that it could be much worse still.
Indeed. But neither can we let those fears stop us from doing the right thing. That's at the heart of Putin's nuclear threats: to get us to fear him, allowing him to get his way.
This is a bad time to tackle Putin. It would have been better if we had tackled him after Litvinenko in 2006; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014; or Salisbury in 2018. Instead, we did the minimum possible (though to her credit, May tried after Salisbury). Germany deserves special censure over this. He could have learnt that as well as his own red lines, there are red lines Russia cannot cross.
But although now is a bad time to tackle Putin; there is a worse time: and that is in the future. Let him get away with what he is doing now, and we'll be in a much worse position to tackle him again in five or ten years.
(And I'd argue that Russia under Putin is essentially being run by a mafia-style ultra-nationalistic group with him as don, that performs terrorist acts abroad.)
Totally agree, but we should also have one eye on what comes next in Russia.
I don't think we should punish the whole Russian people. They've built up centuries of paranoia about the West as it is, which we don't need to feed.
No, actions have consequences. Russia might be an authoritarian regime but as best as we can tell, the majority support both the actions and the methods employed. A reckoning is necessary. The People are complicit in this, just as the German people were under the Nazis. Not all of them but you can't pick and choose too readily.
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
No-one is saying Russia shouldn't lose in Ukraine.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
Why did Germany seethe for twenty years after 1918, then start World War 2, whilst in 1945 they took a very different approach?
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
Yes, I agree. And one has to understand Russian psychology: the route to achieving that is to work with them to get them to recognise they can be a great country for positive reasons following the path you describe, not giving them an almighty punishment fuck which will end up with exactly the same (or worse) results as it did post the end of the Cold War.
One of the myths (I think coming from Russia itself) is that we (the west) gave them an 'almighty punishment fuck' after 1991. As far as I can tell, that is not true. Large amounts of money were directly and indirectly thrown at Russia, in part because we were afraid of it disintegrating. We held out a hand of friendship. And I think it nearly worked.
More than that we urged the Ukrainians NOT to leave the USSR. No-one objected to giving Russia the USSR's seat on the UN Security Council. Welcomed into the G7. It's a classic example of blaming others for your own failings.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Funny as in peculiar.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
I got talking to a French neighbour yesterday (strictly speaking the new boyfriend - but he’s in his 60s - of our long standing neighbour Barbara).
After we’d done commenting on the foggy weather, discussed their pregnant horse and I’d introduced my son to him, he mentioned that he’s in the middle of reading Boris Johnson’s book, in the French translation. Which is, he said, hilarious. “Johnson is a very talented writer”.
Interesting that a random bourgeois in rural France should be picking up Boris Johnson memoirs in the local bookshop.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Funny as in peculiar.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
The EU have bought back this concept in the latest negotiations - they want the five-year transitional fishing arrangements extended permanently - and claiming it as a red line. Hopefully Starmer will be as robust.
Re Farage v Starmer, at this point, I’d expect Starmer to win. In fact, I’d expect a1924 - type result. A big win for Labour, with Reform establishing dominance on the Right, and winning heavily in South Yorkshire, Wearside, South Lancashire, South Wales, East Anglia, and West Midlands.
Four years from now, it might be different.
I'd expect Farage to win, even though he'd try to be painted Fash it wouldn't work.
My bigger concern is that I don't think he or Reform would be effective (at all) in government; it'd be like a repeat of the Johnson administration on acid and he'd face hugely effective passive resistance from the civil service and deep-state he'd be clueless to thwart, so he'd turn to Protest-In-Office instead.
I don't think he has a particularly well thought out policy platform beyond immigration. And, indeed, I'm not even that convinced his immigration platform is that well thought out.
It's like with Le Pen in France: I totally get why people would vote for her. But her economics platform is basically "France needs more national champions and more deficit spending and it's really bad to raise the retirement age." That's Corbyn-like in its delusion.
I think in a forced choice between Farage and Starmer, Starmer gets a second term.
I would say without the slightest doubt. It would be like Le Pen in France but much more so. The country knows how to make FPTP work against the likes of Farage
Le Pen is (joint) favourite to win in 2027, and unlike some times in the past, I don't think the odds are wrong. Indeed, I'd have her clear favourite (albeit not by much). It's not 2002 any more and not an 82-18 country any more.
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
I think that once you establish yourself as the hegemonic party, on one side of other of the political spectrum, you are almost bound to form a government, due to the swing of the pendulum.
Hence my 1924 example. It was a big Tory win, but Labour increased their vote share, and almost wiped out the Liberals in urban and mining constituencies. Once the Tories became unpopular, Labour was bound to get most of the anti-Tory vote.
RN are in the same place, more or less, as Labour in 1924. They’ve eclipsed all rivals on the French Right.
I think that's *largely* true, with the proviso that if you are hegemonic, but provoke greater tactical voting against you than the alternative, then your bar for success becomes pretty high.
You are also missing the LibDem dynamic: the left and centre left has thrived by having two parties that pretty actively tactically vote for each other. In places where Labour can't win, the LibDems gain most of their votes. And in places the LibDems can't win, then may of their voters vote Red.
Now it's quite possible that things are highly fragmented in 2029, and that plays to Reform's advantage, and therefore tactical voting against them is minimized.
But as the Conservatives discovered in 2005 (and this year), or as the SNP did this year, then if there is substantial tactical voting against you in FPTP, you can be absolutely hammered. I could see - for example - Reform substantially ahead of the Labour Party, but struggling to match them in seat terms.
Is there such a thing as "non-Western-centric" science?
What matters is that Labour, if they go along with this, have learnt nothing, absolutely nothing, from the Trump 2.0 win.
Telegraph derangement syndrome. What’s next, is it 7 bins or 15 minute cities?
“What matters is that the Tories, if they go along with Tommy Robinson’s new racial extermination proposal, have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the defeat of Hitler in 1945”.
Just reading Tim Shipman's "Out" - how Brexit got done and the Tories were undone - which is a remarkable book.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Funny as in peculiar.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
The EU have bought back this concept in the latest negotiations - they want the five-year transitional fishing arrangements extended permanently - and claiming it as a red line. Hopefully Starmer will be as robust.
Starmer will concede it in the first 30 seconds.
This evening’s vibe: “I don’t like the government, therefore I’ll predict that they’ll do something really bad and then feel pre-emptively and satisfyingly indignant about it.”
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
How soon before ManU contact Leicester for RVN? Not that his record is great with us(though at least entertaining) but it was the best bit of the ManU season.
How long before Anorim gets sacked?
5 defeats from first 8 games, joint worst in United's entire history.
To pick up an analogy somebody pointed to earlier, Amorim's Manchester United faces a similar dilemma to Starmer's government. Both are dealing with 14 years of neglect and mismanagement, and people who expect them to turn it around in a few short weeks are barking. As with Starmer, let's do an assessment in a couple of years' time.
Comments
They can't go around spraying everything with weedkiller (as is their wont) with lots of people around.
Brother in law used to be paid to do the job properly but he was 'too expensive' (a couple of hundred quid a year) and the council said their 'team' could do it instead. Ha! It might have helped if they could identify what they were supposed to be conserving.
Anyway, this kind of thing was Dave's plan, wasn't it? The Big Society. A good idea in theory...
I hope @DougSeal made the match.
"Here are some worst-case scenarios:
1. Power Vacuum and Internal Chaos
Fragmentation of the State: Regional governors, particularly in resource-rich areas like Siberia, may assert independence, leading to the breakup of the Russian Federation.
Civil War: Rival factions within the military, intelligence agencies, and oligarchs could vie for control, potentially igniting widespread violence.
Rise of Warlords: Local leaders or warlords may fill the void, leading to lawlessness across vast territories.
2. Nuclear Weapons Security Risks
Loose Nukes: In the absence of centralized control, Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal could fall into the hands of rogue actors, terrorist groups, or regional factions.
Misuse of Nuclear Arsenal: A faction attempting to use nuclear weapons to consolidate power could provoke global conflict.
Nuclear Blackmail: Dissident factions could threaten nuclear strikes to gain international recognition or concessions.
3. Rise of Extremist or Hardline Regimes
Ultranationalist Takeover: A far-right or ultranationalist regime could emerge, potentially escalating tensions with neighboring countries and fueling aggressive territorial ambitions.
Authoritarian Strongman: Another autocrat may rise, potentially more ruthless or unpredictable than Putin.
Religious Fundamentalism: Radical religious or ideological movements may exploit the chaos to gain influence, particularly in volatile regions like the North Caucasus.
4. Economic Collapse and Humanitarian Crisis
Economic Freefall: With the central government gone, financial systems could collapse, leading to hyperinflation, unemployment, and severe shortages of basic goods.
Humanitarian Disaster: Widespread poverty, famine, and a breakdown of healthcare systems could result in mass displacement and significant loss of life.
Mass Migration: Millions of refugees may flee to Europe, Central Asia, or China, creating international strain.
5. Escalation of Regional Conflicts
Neighboring State Interventions: Countries like China, Turkey, or NATO members might intervene to secure borders, resources, or protect ethnic minorities, risking international confrontation.
Renewed Wars: Unresolved conflicts in Ukraine, Georgia, or the Caucasus could reignite and intensify.
Territorial Disputes: Regions like Kaliningrad, Crimea, or the Kuril Islands may become flashpoints for disputes with neighboring states.
Energy Supply Shock: Disruption of Russian oil and gas exports could cause a global energy crisis, driving up prices and destabilizing economies worldwide.
Market Instability: The collapse of one of the world's largest economies could lead to severe global market disruptions.
7. International Security Threats
Terrorism: Extremist groups may take advantage of the chaos to operate freely or acquire advanced weaponry.
Proxy Wars: Global powers like the US, China, and NATO may back competing factions, leading to prolonged proxy conflicts.
Global Spillover: Uncontrolled flows of weapons and fighters from Russia could destabilize neighboring regions and beyond.
8. Ethnic and Religious Conflicts
Ethnic Uprisings: Long-suppressed ethnic groups within Russia, such as the Chechens, Tatars, or Bashkirs, may push for independence, sparking conflict.
Islamist Insurgencies: Radical groups in the North Caucasus and Central Asia might exploit the collapse to expand their influence.
9. Environmental Catastrophe
Neglect of Critical Infrastructure: The collapse of governance could lead to the failure of nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, and other critical infrastructure, causing environmental disasters.
Resource Exploitation: A lack of regulation might lead to rampant resource extraction, causing long-term ecological damage.
10. Broader Geopolitical Consequences
China’s Expansion: China may seek to assert control over parts of Siberia or leverage the collapse for strategic gain.
NATO Expansion: NATO could attempt to stabilize former Russian territories, risking confrontation with remaining Russian factions.
Global Power Shift: The collapse of a major global player like Russia would leave a vacuum, potentially altering the global balance of power and emboldening other authoritarian regimes."
How's that?
We do need an eye on what comes next but the regime's actions, habits, methods and grand worldview is unlikely to change unless it is challenged at the deepest level. For that, Russia must lose in Ukraine. Realistically, the only way that was ever likely to happen was on the home front, and that's what's beginning to happen. It should be allowed to play out. No off ramps.
Especially 1 I would say is a better case scenario.
But I don't agree with your Morgenthau Plan which is emotional and remarkably short-sighted.
And on Man Utd, their display is abject beyond belief and unless they bring in new signings in January they could end up in a relegation battle
As here. Apart from anything else, I don't think the country would necessarily know who to vote for to Keep Farage Out, given Reform are far back in many constituencies and where their vote came from would be crucial. But also, as with the changes in France, there simply isn't that level of hostility across the board to the far right. In a straight Starmer / Farage vote, many Tories would back Farage just on left-right social and cultural principles, while some Labour ones would because much of Reform is quite left economically (despite occasional broad claims to the contrary, all specifics tend to subsidies, increased spending and protectionism), and even some LD/Grn voters would as a Change candidate - while SNP voters could play tactics and seek to undermine the Union by voting out the mainstream. I wouldn't like to call it, not least because Farage is a much better campaigner.
Nearly 400 pages in I've had my first snort out loud.
I'm reading about The Nightmare Before Christmas, where talks almost broke down on 21st December 2020 over fish - the EU wanted a hammer clause across the whole treaty if it didn't get what it wanted on fish quotas in future - and it describes a 1:1 between Johnson and von der Leyen where he told her at 8pm, "I cannot sign this treaty, Ursula. I can't do something that is not in my country's interests". He then spoke 'terrible German' to von der Leyen, 'Viel hummer, kein hammer' (lots of lobster, no hammer). And then sought to explain the problem with reference to a surreal sketch from Monty Python.
Does remind me that for all his faults Johnson was funny.
Yeltsin was proto nationalist and was only held back from being more Putinesque by his drink, and he was his progedy for a reason.
https://www.hortonsgroup.com/single-storey-log-houses/30-sq-m-single-storey-house
If you do all the work, yes. But for any estimate like this you need to add 60% contingency because there will be loads of things you'll forget to price, and supply, labour integration and finishing issues. Some things will go wrong. That gets you very close to my estimate.
Big savings could be made by some sort of modular or prefab house though, albeit I'm not too sighted on those.
I stick to my prognosis: Reform would fall apart in office.
Unless you believe that we should all take a substantial pay cut? In which case what is the point of having lower house prices?
*just look at the polling, only 19% think it has gone well.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/how-the-government-is-handling-the-issue-of-brexit-in-the-uk
And no, I don't think it's as simple as "The treaty of Versailles was too harsh."
I think the main reason was that after WW1 Germany suffered, to use a well-known diplomatic phrase, severe butt-hurt. It was easy to sell a message that they had been betrayed, not properly defeated. Whereas in 1945, it was clear that they had been militarily defeated. It became very hard to sell a 'we were betrayed!' message.
Putin and Russia are at the butt-hurt phase. They lost the Cold War, and suffered *despite* western countries throwing lots of treasure at them in the 1990s.
This does not mean that we are going to invade Russia. But it does mean that Russia - including its people - need to understand quite what they've done over the last two decades, and why it is wrong. That the actions, such as sanctions, taken against them are not because we hate the Russians, but because we hate what they have done, and are doing. There is a route out of this mess for them, and that is to stop doing the stuff they are doing.
Russia has - or perhaps had - massive potential. Great natural resources; a highly-educated workforce, and massive engineering capability. It can become a great country and a world leader *without* harassing and invading neighbouring countries.
So you're wrong. Not for the first time.
Polling consistently shows that voters think it has gone badly.
Brexit is as popular as a turd in a swimming pool.
There are other polls and reports, e.g.
https://natcen.ac.uk/public-attitudes-new-eu-referendum
Yeltsin went through any number of PMs and Putin was foisted on him by a KGB-FSB clique who were rightly worried that they may lose what precarious grip on power they retained. But they were lucky the music stopped when Putin was in the hot-seat; there was no guarantee of that (Chechen wars and staged apartment bombings notwithstanding).
But what comes next can be impossible to predict. Who knows what the second rank would do if allowed power. Putin was not obviously a new dictator in 2000. In fact he looked out of his depth and the Oligarchy looked set to retain its strong share of power. Who would have predicted that after Stalin's even greater dictatorship, a communal and mutually agreed sharing of power would emerge among the elite? Or that after Franco, Juan Carlos - who held office through the autocratic era - would restore democracy?
You can price substructures and superstructures (the unit costs of the materials) because they are surveyable quantities and can be pre-purchased and stored. Labour on top is more of a challenge but the sequence should be largely predictable.
Civils and MEH works can vary site to site. All residential building projects are a microcosm of how very large infrastructure projects can go wrong, usually because the risk simply hasn't been properly accounted for and the buck always stops with the client.
"For the fifth consecutive year, planning continues to be the largest obstacle to delivery"
https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/planning-delays-a-lack-of-providers-to-take-on-affordable-homes-and-nimbys-top-concerns-for-sme-home-builders/
Why do you pretend that finance is the main complaint, when its a matter of record that planning is the main complaint?
(I am still really, really fascinated with the subject. In an alternate universe, I'd be working on a tunnel somewhere in the world.)
I suppose someone new could emerge who's wise and strong enough to lead Russia into a brave new age. But I'd assess that as a 15% shot.
Hence my 1924 example. It was a big Tory win, but Labour increased their vote share, and almost wiped out the Liberals in urban and mining constituencies. Once the Tories became unpopular, Labour was bound to get most of the anti-Tory vote.
RN are in the same place, more or less, as Labour in 1924. They’ve eclipsed all rivals on the French Right.
In Berwick-uon-Tweed, there's a fine street of houses near the barracks - obviously the sort of place the officers liked to live. Sone very nice interiors too if you are lucky and pass when work is being done. But oh, the subsidence on some ... I can't help noticing that there was an abortive attempt at a ?C16 star fortification in that very area. The ditches not properly compacted?
I had a cracking time on the TBMs when the Elizabeth Line was being bored between Liverpool St and Whitechapel. I'll never forget that experience, the slurry that came out in droves on the conveyors nor how quickly the tunnel segments were laid.
It was the same in the Gorbachov/Yeltsin era. Once things started cracking in the USSR the various republics declared independence very quickly. While Putin may mock their nationalism, it is obvious from Ukraine that even closely related people often speaking the same language do not hunger for Russian rule.
If the Putin regime does collapse, it is most likely into another gangster state ruled by oligarchs. It's not impossible that something more radical could emerge, but that is unlikely to be democracy. Most countries take some time before they see the benefits of democracy.
There are a number of OK cost estimating sites online, or see if one of your advisers has a copy of SPONS.
But 3.5 m x 10 m is a really strange proportion with a very high SA:V ratio, and much more heat loss. and all your rooms with 3 outside walls. 7m x 7m or 6m x 8m would give you 30-50% more floor area for the same amount of wall.
With 30cm thick walls (which may not be achievable with conventional techniques - depending on which conventional techniques you mean) techniques you will end up with very narrow rooms under 9ft wide.
On those dimensions I would be looking at something very simple, like single thickness no cavity block and the insulation on the outside, or a turnkey timber frame.
Labour urged to drop ‘Western-centric’ science in school curriculum
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/12/30/labour-urged-drop-western-centric-science-curriculum/
However, if Russia is to lose then the regime will almost fall, not least because the latter may well be necessary to produce the former. As such, we can't worry excessively about what comes next.
That surely ends Chelsea's title hopes realistically? At the halfway mark of the season [for them] they're now 10 points behind Liverpool with the Reds having a game in hand still.
Can Ipswich catch up with Man Utd in the table though? Looking more plausible than when I joked about it earlier that the gap is coming down to 7 points tonight between Ipswich in the relegation zone and United.
Someone's comic genius is someone else's complete w*****.
Is there a fire drill....'
.....Sang the Newcastle supporters.....
But that may play into Le Pen's hands anyway if she ends up against Melenchon or similar in the run-off.
This is where the madness of EDI - which sits at the top of so many institutions and organisations now - leads.
Science is science is science.
5 defeats from first 8 games, joint worst in United's entire history.
Still pretty terrible for Russians, but all these wars and foreign destabilisings get in the way of honest theft.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62z14perego
Far too many players are either past it or hopelessly useless that a reconstruction is inevitable and it won't be quick
They may have a relegation fight but I expect Amorin will survive
This is roughly up there with “Britain First urges Tories to adopt mass deportation as policy”.
After we’d done commenting on the foggy weather, discussed their pregnant horse and I’d introduced my son to him, he mentioned that he’s in the middle of reading Boris Johnson’s book, in the French translation. Which is, he said, hilarious. “Johnson is a very talented writer”.
Interesting that a random bourgeois in rural France should be picking up Boris Johnson memoirs in the local bookshop.
Ridiculous in fact. Is there anywhere where people are responsible for themselves?
A heck of a lot shorter than two months ago.
In the West Midlands alone 183 Ambulances are waiting outside hospitals, over 100 have been there more than an hour. 18 are en route.to somewhere.
Glad I'm not working until Thursday...
You are also missing the LibDem dynamic: the left and centre left has thrived by having two parties that pretty actively tactically vote for each other. In places where Labour can't win, the LibDems gain most of their votes. And in places the LibDems can't win, then may of their voters vote Red.
Now it's quite possible that things are highly fragmented in 2029, and that plays to Reform's advantage, and therefore tactical voting against them is minimized.
But as the Conservatives discovered in 2005 (and this year), or as the SNP did this year, then if there is substantial tactical voting against you in FPTP, you can be absolutely hammered. I could see - for example - Reform substantially ahead of the Labour Party, but struggling to match them in seat terms.
“What matters is that the Tories, if they go along with Tommy Robinson’s new racial extermination proposal, have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the defeat of Hitler in 1945”.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/rare-spider-and-funding-row-end-plan-for-uks-answer-to-disneyland-wzr29gnnm