I am also a homeowner in London. My new house - in the outer boroughs - has gone "up" £9k since I bought it in the spring. This "money" is useless to me, unless I move out of this wonderful city, which I have no social, professional or economic cause nor inclination to do.
I have a house in London, bought in May 2007 (yay! timing! not.).
We want to do some pretty substantial building works, and the fact that the value has risen means the loan-to-value percentage on a remortgage is lower, and so our interest rate is lower. So I'm over the moon.
Long term plan is to move back to the countryside, so unless the sky falls in over the next 20 years*, a country pile (well, at least somewhere with a garden and a view of a field!) will be within reach.
* Given the ongoing global geopolitical shift, this is not a negligible risk.
Lucky I'm not planning to go into politics then, isn't it.
Also lucky that you have nothing that would give you grave concerns about the suitability for government for the current tory party as well right now. Happily.
They make a frustrating number of unforced errors, which appear to be driven by a lack of senior-level focus at an early enough stage.
Labour on the other hand obviously making it known they were unsuitable for power what with the relentless spin and overwhelming compulsion to manage newspaper headlines using clearly unsuitable and poisonous characters like Campbell and McBride who should never have been close to the former PMs Brown and Blair.
I agree with you Charles, I do indeed.
At least lack of attention to detail can be fixed - I'm not sure the cultural approach is that easy to address.
I am also a homeowner in London. My new house - in the outer boroughs - has gone "up" £9k since I bought it in the spring. This "money" is useless to me, unless I move out of this wonderful city, which I have no social, professional or economic cause nor inclination to do.
Ignoring the hyperbole surronding your rant, you have to factor in:
+ Sunk costs; Taxes expended and removal implications, + Administrative costs: New 'leckie, Gas [optional], Council, Water, Telephones, Insurance, Assurance, Al-Beeb, Mobile, Direct-debit, Electoral-roll &c, + "Local" inflation: The nominal value of your home may have risen but how does it perform to the residential-trend? + The neighbours: Community or exclusion?, + The "rho" [investment-risk] factor: Have you invested against future interest-rates and how you may be assessed?, + Your family's attitude to a 'market-mover' disrupting their personal-lives (which means you have to assess your assets and liabilities through the eyes of others), and + Local versus future social amenities (pubs mainly; hospitals, GPs, libraries accordingly).
So your "NineK" improvement may - just - cover the cost of the relocation but you have yet to earn a yield on your investment. But you know that, no...?
@Sean@Tim That map doesn't show house price changes, but CHANGE in socioeconomic demography. It must be one of the most confusing and ever, which isn't surprising since it was fashioned by estate agents. All it is showing is that shitholes in inner London have been gentrified in recent years - as the middle classes have moved in. I don't include your area in that Sean - it is a very nice lefty area and has been for some time.
I am also a homeowner in London. My new house - in the outer boroughs - has gone "up" £9k since I bought it in the spring. This "money" is useless to me, unless I move out of this wonderful city, which I have no social, professional or economic cause nor inclination to do.
Ignoring the hyperbole surronding your rant, you have to factor in:
+ Sunk costs; Taxes expended and removal implications, + Administrative costs: New 'leckie, Gas [optional], Council, Water, Telephones, Insurance, Assurance, Al-Beeb, Mobile, Direct-debit, Electoral-roll &c, + "Local" inflation: The nominal value of your home may have risen but how does it perform to the residential-trend? + The neighbours: Community or exclusion?, + The "rho" [investment-risk] factor: Have you invested against future interest-rates and how you may be assessed?, + Your family's attitude to a 'market-mover' disrupting their personal-lives (which means you have to assess your assets and liabilities through the eyes of others), and + Local versus future social amenities (pubs mainly; hospitals, GPs, libraries accordingly).
So your "NineK" improvement may - just - cover the cost of the relocation but you have yet to earn a yield on your investment. But you know that, no...?
I seem to recall MorrisDancer was inquiring about GTAV retail stats and it's popularity?
It made $800million in it's first 24 hours and over $1billion in it's first three days. Which makes it the most successful entertainment launch of all time.
Much as the fuss about a US TV renaissance about a decade ago was well deserved, and continues up to a point, the world has clearly moved on.
Those kind of numbers overshadow blockbuster movies, never mind TV.
London property one-upmanship - my parents bought their house in Dartmouth Park, round the corner from EdM, for £7,000 in 1970. My Mum is still there now, surrounded by the great and the good, and people who do something in the City.
I seem to recall MorrisDancer was inquiring about GTAV retail stats and it's popularity?
It made $800million in it's first 24 hours and over a $1billion in it's first three days. Which makes it the most successful entertainment launch of all time.
Much as the fuss about a US TV renaissance about a decade ago was well deserved, and continues till this day, the world has clearly moved on.
Those kind of numbers overshadow blockbuster movies, never mind TV.
The only issue being that the cost of game is much more than going to the movies, so the revenues are higher on lower numbers of purchasers. But its still staggering.
I'm playing it, loving Trevor....in some way reminds me of Gordon Brown.
Sounds as if your mum is a classic example of the asset rich cashflow poor army of older voters who bought their houses way back. What would be your view of raised taxes on housing / mansion tax / soak the rich / tax wealth?
Sounds as if your mum is a classic example of the asset rich cashflow poor army of older voters who bought their houses way back. What would be your view of raised taxes on housing / mansion tax / soak the rich / tax wealth?
If the situation is as it sounds it's a great example of why we need more tax on property and less tax on work. The asset's sitting there being inefficiently used by somebody who doesn't need to be able to commute every day. A better tax system would prod her to sell up to somebody who does something in the City.
"In a paper published with colleagues today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he presents a mathematical model (shown on the left of the video above) that correlates well with historical data (shown on the right) on the development and spread of large-scale, complex societies (represented as red territories on the green area studied). The simulation runs from 1500 B.C.E. to 1500 C.E.—so it encompasses the growth of societies like Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and the like—and replicates historical trends with 65 percent accuracy.
This might not sound like a perfect accounting of human history, but that’s not really the goal. Turchin simply wants to apply mathematical analysis to the field of history so that researchers can determine which factors are most influential in affecting the spread of human states and populations, just as ecologists have done when analyzing wildlife population dynamics. Essentially, he wants to answer a simple question: Why did complex societies develop and spread in some areas but not others?
In this study, Turchin’s team found that conflict between societies and the development of military technology as a result of war were the most important elements that predicted which states would develop and expand over the map—with those factors taken away, the model deteriorated, describing actual history with only 16 percent accuracy.
Sounds as if your mum is a classic example of the asset rich cashflow poor army of older voters who bought their houses way back. What would be your view of raised taxes on housing / mansion tax / soak the rich / tax wealth?
I keep telling her to move to a smaller place. She won't. She is so emotionally invested in that house - it's where she raised a family and has lived for over 40 years. Maybe taxes would spur her into downsizing. It would break her heart, but it might also be the best thing for her. In short, I don't know!
"An anti-establishment party that is new and faces stern opposition from both the Left and the Right in Britain brings with it a unique set of challenges. Making a point of being anti-status quo has the advantage of giving you a radical, fresh feel. The downside is that the establishment bites back.
Michael Crick and others have tasted purple blood and will now want more. Ukip can no longer be a party where flippant, thoughtless comments are made by senior party members because the game has fundamentally changed. Ukip is now being treated as one of the big boys, something the party has long fought for, but which poses a myriad of new challenges for those within the party. It is adapt or die time.
Representing a political party is different from being an independent candidate. You have a duty to remember that what you say is not just on behalf of yourself or your constituents but reflects on the entire party as well. Bloom's actions in Westminster ensured that so many other passionate, interesting Ukip members at the party's conference were ignored by the press. Their messages on policy, exactly what the party must continue to bang on about if it is to progress, were drowned out by Bloom's flamboyant behaviour.
I seem to recall MorrisDancer was inquiring about GTAV retail stats and it's popularity?
It made $800million in it's first 24 hours and over a $1billion in it's first three days. Which makes it the most successful entertainment launch of all time.
Much as the fuss about a US TV renaissance about a decade ago was well deserved, and continues till this day, the world has clearly moved on.
Those kind of numbers overshadow blockbuster movies, never mind TV.
The only issue being that the cost of game is much more than going to the movies, so the revenues are higher on lower numbers of purchasers. But its still staggering.
I'm playing it, loving Trevor....in some way reminds me of Gordon Brown.
Indeed. It's a question of value for money in the end since most games offer a far longer experience than the couple of hours or so to watch a film. Though there is an increasing number of games that are offering different pricepoints and playthrough timescales for their games as the digital marketplace encourages new approaches such as that. A game offering a three hour immersive experience and narrative is quite viable at a lower pricepoint. There are quite a few examples already that have sold very well since not everyone has the time to expend on 40 hour plus games.
That being said there is now a bit of a chasm between the limited number of big publishers who can afford to invest in AAA titles and the rest of the industry. You can compare it to blockbuster movies and small independent filmmakers since there are other similarities. The willingness of the small indie developers to take a risk on unusual and innovative gamestyles and narratives being a good example.
GTAV might well encourage more investment in the big publishers however since those numbers and that profitability is pretty damn hard to ignore.
You add that to the next generation of consoles pretty much being sold out already before launch and the industry does have a pretty good outlook on the whole.
The actual game is more of an incremental evolutionary advance rather than a revolutionary one. Yet it has more than enough new features and ideas in it to make it quite a bit more than just another sequel. It deserves the success from a technical standpoint alone given the rather old (in technology terms) consoles it runs on and is clearly pushing to the limit
I am not going to defend the current failings in house building but let us have some fair comparisons. Faisal's outrage over 50 houses. Last year's provisional figures for England show that there was an enormous drop of 50 yes FIFTY fewer houses built in England in 2012-13 than in 2010-11. 2010-11 was a year started under a Lanbour govt and most of its low level would have been under plans approved during their governance.
Sounds as if your mum is a classic example of the asset rich cashflow poor army of older voters who bought their houses way back. What would be your view of raised taxes on housing / mansion tax / soak the rich / tax wealth?
I keep telling her to move to a smaller place. She won't. She is so emotionally invested in that house - it's where she raised a family and has lived for over 40 years. Maybe taxes would spur her into downsizing. It would break her heart, but it might also be the best thing for her. In short, I don't know!
I thought your mum lived somewhere in the country with poor bus links?
There's the election campaign right there. Deficit reduction,growth, benefit savings, social mobility all tie in to that centrepiece. An end to the cancerous housing policies of the last 35 years.
How many houses did Brown promise to build and how many did he actually get built?
Avery claimed last night he promised to "create two million new home owners" and created two million new home owners
But as Macmillan and co recognised simply creating home owners will never ever build enough houses
In 2007 Gordon Brown made a "pledge" that Labour will have built 2 million homes between 1997 and 2010.
At the time he made the pledge, 1,916,120 homes had already been completed. This left Gordon the Herculean task of building 83,880 homes in the remaining three years of his term.
Gordon set himself a target of 27,960 per year which amounted to 15% of the annual total Labour had already built in each of the previous ten years. In the event Gordon and Tone built 2,466,390 at an average of 189,722 per year.
Miliband's pledge to build one million homes over a five year term from 2015 is similar empty rhetoric. In the five years before the financial crash, Labour was building an average of 209,764 per year.
All Miliband is promising to do today is to continue building at 95% of the rate achieved before the recession. Miliband's target involves about as little 'stretch' as that made by Gordon in 2007.
And it involves even less policy intervention. As Topping pointed out downthread, the proportions of new dwellings built by the private sector over the past twenty years are around 85% of total. Housing Association builds have accounted for 13% and Local Authorities 2%.
To summarise. Even if Ed Miliband did nothing and changed no policy, his 1 million target would still be met.
This thread could explain why the media and political class kept quiet about the inner-city crime problem over the last 40 years. House prices dropping as people with kids moved out created the opportunity for people with no kids to gentrify and make some money.
Oh! Wales: Nought t'do with NHS-Engerlundt lad. You don't understand t'devolution-settlement Grumpy....
Actually Wales appears to have the least complaints proportionally. Any view as to why NHS England is so inferior regarding numbers of complaints to both NHS Scotland and NHS Wales?
Luckily housebuilders are going great guns, partly thanks to Help To Buy. Obviously building starts were going to slump when prices slumped after Gordon's crash, but that's now slowly beginning to correct outside London.
Of course, if you really want to build more you have to fix the planning system (the supply side) as well as the demand side. Labour's contribution to the coalition's efforts to do so doesn't exactly inspire confidence on that score, but perhaps Ed is going to tell us about a change of heart.
Unpopular millionaire politician trys to boost image with carefully stage managed pictures with his wife.
The PB Kinnocks will be all over this.
TelegraphPics: Photo 1 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/cI7JU8qLvO
TelegraphPics: Photo 2 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/XZu3zgiOVa
"it's still hard to argue with the RSPB's verdict that cats don't have much effect on numbers of birds in gardens, if only because – despite cats – there are such large numbers of birds in towns and cities.
But the new research suggests that if there were fewer cats, there might be even more."
@tim - I'm not addicted to anything (except maybe fine claret), but it's certainly the case that the public sector hasn't built many houses in recent years under Labour, and so private housebuilders are absolutely key to increasing supply in the short to medium term. I don't quite see why you'd need public financing in addition to this - it can't both be true that there's a house price bubble as you claim and that the market wouldn't be willing to supply the demand at what you regard as inflated prices, if the planning system allowed it to do so.
John Smith @Unionbuster 1m Can you comment on Mr McBride Gordon Brown? Zoom .. . . . .. .. out the door #bbcdp #LabConf #Lab13
James Tyrrell @JRTyrrell 1m Loving video of #Brown trying to escape Telegraph Journo in New York on #mcbride issue. Almost breaks into a run. Very statesmanlike #lab13
42% say Miliband's TV and radio manner let him down
More than 2,000 respondents in an ITV News/ComRes poll were asked to rate seven factors of Ed Miliband's leadership as a positive or a negative.
The top three positive factors were:
Speaking out against News International over phone hacking - 44 percent Opposition to military intervention in Syria - 44 percent Attempts to reform the Labour Party’s relationship with trade unions - 34 percent
The top three negative factors were:
The way he comes across on radio and TV - 42 percent The way he has lead the Labour party overall since 2010 - 37 percent Standing against his brother David for the party leadership - 30 percent
Unpopular millionaire politician trys to boost image with carefully stage managed pictures with his wife.
The PB Kinnocks will be all over this.
TelegraphPics: Photo 1 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/cI7JU8qLvO
TelegraphPics: Photo 2 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/XZu3zgiOVa
Labour getting the +3% 'idiot vote' to whoever is on the telly/radio the most at the moment. The Lib Dems, so far as I can tell have had absolubtely no conference boost whatsoever... Not even a favourable outlier...
Unpopular millionaire politician trys to boost image with carefully stage managed pictures with his wife.
The PB Kinnocks will be all over this.
TelegraphPics: Photo 1 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/cI7JU8qLvO
TelegraphPics: Photo 2 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/XZu3zgiOVa
Amazing really that Osborne only started to wake up to housing halfway through the parliament.After slashing the social housebuilding budget in half in 2010 Whether you think like I do that the govt should've thrown the kitchen sink at housing three years ago,or whether you believe like Avery that stoking up the demand side now is right, its certainly been a huge missed opportunity for the govt. And now they are trying to cram as much feelgood bubble into the tail end of the Parliament.
Local Authorities have build 6200 dwellings in the first three years under Osborne. As the figures for the third year, 2012-13 only include England and Scotland built 1,110 dwellings in 2012, the final total is likely to be between 7200-7500.
So in the first three years of this government more homes have been built by Local Authorities than during the entire 1997-2010 Labour governments who only managed 6,400 in total.
In the first two years of the Coalition government (stats are not yet available for 2012-13), Housing Association new builds have averaged 32,410. Under the 13 years of Labour misrule, the average was 24,797.
Private Sector new-builds as a proportion of total housing stock sold have been higher in each of the first three years of the Coalition government than in any one year of the 97-10 Labout governments. The Private Sector, under any government, will only build to meet realistic expectations of demand volume and value. Turnover in the residential property market (volume x value) was only 25% of pre crisis peaks in June 2013:
During the boom times of 2007, the Indicator stood at 10,000 properties a day. The flow of properties fell drastically as the financial crisis hit, but recovered to 4,000 per day in 2010.
However, over the last three years, the Indicator has shown a downward trend, with stock levels falling faster than marketing times.
Currently, the Indicator stands at 2,761 properties a day – a turnover 14% lower than in June 2012. [Estate Agent News]
So even though turnover has been running at 28% of 2007 levels, private sector new builds are currently averaging 60% of the 2007 levels.
The justification for Osborne's housing finance interventions are staring you in the face, tim.
"I don't quite see why you'd need public financing in addition to this"
Because there's one hundred years of evidence that the private sector doesn't build enough houses, ever.
pic.twitter.com/cIiliQvwmf
In PB Toryworld, a small point I know.
And there's also a hundred years of evidence that the public sector doesn't, except for a brief period under the Conservative governments of the fifties when the country was being rebuilt after total war.
Currently the public sector, like the private sector, simply can't build large numbers of houses, because the planning system prevents it. Perhaps Ed intends to change this, we shall see, but I'm not holding my breath.
Apparently Ed begins to make his way to the stage at 2 but will not begin speaking to 2.15 . He is doing a Prince Nazeem /darts player style entrance. Rumours are he has been practising summersaulting onto the stage and doing a version of Gangnam Style .
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 2012/13 was the worst year for English housebuilding completions on record (since 1969). Build for victory! …
Ignorant twaddle from Faisal Islam. He is using the same source as I am - LiveTable209.xls from DCLG - so he should be able to read that the 2012-13 figures are incomplete. There is a provisional estimate only for England and no data yet for Scotland, Wales and NI.
If Miliband made an election promise of 365 days in 75% of years Faisal Islam would claim Labour is"building for victory!"
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 1m ComRes/ITV: of those who expressed a preference 57% think Ed Balls should be replaced as Shadow Chancellor.
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 3m ComRes/ITV: of those who expressed a preference 72% Labour would have a better chance without Ed Miliband as Party Leader.
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 5m ComRes/ITV: of those who expressed a preference 78% think Ed Miliband does not come across as an election winner.
Housing is one of those areas where there are countless statistics which can be tailored for any argument and countless views (including the same person holding more than one view at a time (if a proposed new estate is to be built near them.- they tend to oppose that but still insist on more houses being built nationally). There is a reason there are planning problems and delays because deep down people don't want new houses near them despite what they say in national surveys about the need for more houses.
Unpopular millionaire politician trys to boost image with carefully stage managed pictures with his wife.
The PB Kinnocks will be all over this.
TelegraphPics: Photo 1 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/cI7JU8qLvO
TelegraphPics: Photo 2 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/XZu3zgiOVa
Oh, wait...
"My husband, my hero"
Last throw of the dice from desperate man..
Remember this from the last Labour Conference before the election:
This thread could explain why the media and political class kept quiet about the inner-city crime problem over the last 40 years. House prices dropping as people with kids moved out created the opportunity for people with no kids to gentrify and make some money.
London house prices have fallen over the last 40 years? Thats going to be an interesting conspiracy theory to maintain.
And generally its not people with kids who have been leaving London, looking at Londons demographics its over 60's who lead that group.
I didn't say they'd fallen everywhere. I'm looking at the gentrified areas and how they match with high crime areas in the past.
I also didn't say people leaving London. I said people moving out of the higher crime areas.
And the people who move out of high crime areas are people with kids and gentrifiers without kids who move in.
Comments
We want to do some pretty substantial building works, and the fact that the value has risen means the loan-to-value percentage on a remortgage is lower, and so our interest rate is lower. So I'm over the moon.
Long term plan is to move back to the countryside, so unless the sky falls in over the next 20 years*, a country pile (well, at least somewhere with a garden and a view of a field!) will be within reach.
* Given the ongoing global geopolitical shift, this is not a negligible risk.
+ Sunk costs; Taxes expended and removal implications,
+ Administrative costs: New 'leckie, Gas [optional], Council, Water, Telephones, Insurance, Assurance, Al-Beeb, Mobile, Direct-debit, Electoral-roll &c,
+ "Local" inflation: The nominal value of your home may have risen but how does it perform to the residential-trend?
+ The neighbours: Community or exclusion?,
+ The "rho" [investment-risk] factor: Have you invested against future interest-rates and how you may be assessed?,
+ Your family's attitude to a 'market-mover' disrupting their personal-lives (which means you have to assess your assets and liabilities through the eyes of others), and
+ Local versus future social amenities (pubs mainly; hospitals, GPs, libraries accordingly).
So your "NineK" improvement may - just - cover the cost of the relocation but you have yet to earn a yield on your investment. But you know that, no...?
:best-wishes-with-your-endeavours:
That map doesn't show house price changes, but CHANGE in socioeconomic demography. It must be one of the most confusing and ever, which isn't surprising since it was fashioned by estate agents. All it is showing is that shitholes in inner London have been gentrified in recent years - as the middle classes have moved in. I don't include your area in that Sean - it is a very nice lefty area and has been for some time.
It made $800million in it's first 24 hours and over $1billion in it's first three days.
Which makes it the most successful entertainment launch of all time.
Much as the fuss about a US TV renaissance about a decade ago was well deserved, and continues up to a point, the world has clearly moved on.
Those kind of numbers overshadow blockbuster movies, never mind TV.
I'm playing it, loving Trevor....in some way reminds me of Gordon Brown.
Sounds as if your mum is a classic example of the asset rich cashflow poor army of older voters who bought their houses way back. What would be your view of raised taxes on housing / mansion tax / soak the rich / tax wealth?
UK trade worth over £1 trillion in 2012, 6th largest in world for goods & services traded #StatsTradeEvent sfy.co/eQJP
Oh! Wales: Nought t'do with NHS-Engerlundt lad. You don't understand t'devolution-settlement Grumpy....
"In a paper published with colleagues today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he presents a mathematical model (shown on the left of the video above) that correlates well with historical data (shown on the right) on the development and spread of large-scale, complex societies (represented as red territories on the green area studied). The simulation runs from 1500 B.C.E. to 1500 C.E.—so it encompasses the growth of societies like Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and the like—and replicates historical trends with 65 percent accuracy.
This might not sound like a perfect accounting of human history, but that’s not really the goal. Turchin simply wants to apply mathematical analysis to the field of history so that researchers can determine which factors are most influential in affecting the spread of human states and populations, just as ecologists have done when analyzing wildlife population dynamics. Essentially, he wants to answer a simple question: Why did complex societies develop and spread in some areas but not others?
In this study, Turchin’s team found that conflict between societies and the development of military technology as a result of war were the most important elements that predicted which states would develop and expand over the map—with those factors taken away, the model deteriorated, describing actual history with only 16 percent accuracy.
Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/09/3000-years-of-human-history-described-in-one-set-of-mathematical-equations/#ixzz2fo9r9Ze3
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
"An anti-establishment party that is new and faces stern opposition from both the Left and the Right in Britain brings with it a unique set of challenges. Making a point of being anti-status quo has the advantage of giving you a radical, fresh feel. The downside is that the establishment bites back.
Michael Crick and others have tasted purple blood and will now want more. Ukip can no longer be a party where flippant, thoughtless comments are made by senior party members because the game has fundamentally changed. Ukip is now being treated as one of the big boys, something the party has long fought for, but which poses a myriad of new challenges for those within the party. It is adapt or die time.
Representing a political party is different from being an independent candidate. You have a duty to remember that what you say is not just on behalf of yourself or your constituents but reflects on the entire party as well. Bloom's actions in Westminster ensured that so many other passionate, interesting Ukip members at the party's conference were ignored by the press. Their messages on policy, exactly what the party must continue to bang on about if it is to progress, were drowned out by Bloom's flamboyant behaviour.
That being said there is now a bit of a chasm between the limited number of big publishers who can afford to invest in AAA titles and the rest of the industry. You can compare it to blockbuster movies and small independent filmmakers since there are other similarities. The willingness of the small indie developers to take a risk on unusual and innovative gamestyles and narratives being a good example.
GTAV might well encourage more investment in the big publishers however since those numbers and that profitability is pretty damn hard to ignore.
You add that to the next generation of consoles pretty much being sold out already before launch and the industry does have a pretty good outlook on the whole.
The actual game is more of an incremental evolutionary advance rather than a revolutionary one. Yet it has more than enough new features and ideas in it to make it quite a bit more than just another sequel. It deserves the success from a technical standpoint alone given the rather old (in technology terms) consoles it runs on and is clearly pushing to the limit
Last year's provisional figures for England show that there was an enormous drop of 50 yes FIFTY fewer houses built in England in 2012-13 than in 2010-11. 2010-11 was a year started under a Lanbour govt and most of its low level would have been under plans approved during their governance.
Perhaps I have you confused with someone else?
At the time he made the pledge, 1,916,120 homes had already been completed. This left Gordon the Herculean task of building 83,880 homes in the remaining three years of his term.
Gordon set himself a target of 27,960 per year which amounted to 15% of the annual total Labour had already built in each of the previous ten years. In the event Gordon and Tone built 2,466,390 at an average of 189,722 per year.
Miliband's pledge to build one million homes over a five year term from 2015 is similar empty rhetoric. In the five years before the financial crash, Labour was building an average of 209,764 per year.
All Miliband is promising to do today is to continue building at 95% of the rate achieved before the recession. Miliband's target involves about as little 'stretch' as that made by Gordon in 2007.
And it involves even less policy intervention. As Topping pointed out downthread, the proportions of new dwellings built by the private sector over the past twenty years are around 85% of total. Housing Association builds have accounted for 13% and Local Authorities 2%.
To summarise. Even if Ed Miliband did nothing and changed no policy, his 1 million target would still be met.
Farage getting a little nervous perhaps? Something about tents and urination?
Of course, if you really want to build more you have to fix the planning system (the supply side) as well as the demand side. Labour's contribution to the coalition's efforts to do so doesn't exactly inspire confidence on that score, but perhaps Ed is going to tell us about a change of heart.
The PB Kinnocks will be all over this.
TelegraphPics: Photo 1 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/cI7JU8qLvO
TelegraphPics: Photo 2 of 2: #Labour leader Ed #Miliband and his wife Justine in their hotel room in #Brighton (Stefan Rousseau/PA) http://t.co/XZu3zgiOVa
Oh, wait...
But no detail on the how and the how much.. ZZZZzzz - ferk off Ed its just bullshine.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/10319711/What-effect-do-cats-have-on-British-wildlife.html
"it's still hard to argue with the RSPB's verdict that cats don't have much effect on numbers of birds in gardens, if only because – despite cats – there are such large numbers of birds in towns and cities.
But the new research suggests that if there were fewer cats, there might be even more."
sven will eat them first; screw England; and then retire to Norway. [You have read his posting history, no...?]
David Wooding @DavidWooding
All set for Ed Miliband's speech. Remember where you heard the big announcement first. #SunonSunday #Lab13
Can you comment on Mr McBride Gordon Brown? Zoom .. . . . .. .. out the door #bbcdp #LabConf #Lab13
James Tyrrell @JRTyrrell 1m
Loving video of #Brown trying to escape Telegraph Journo in New York on #mcbride issue. Almost breaks into a run. Very statesmanlike #lab13
There's a video? - 20p reward etc.
42% say Miliband's TV and radio manner let him down
More than 2,000 respondents in an ITV News/ComRes poll were asked to rate seven factors of Ed Miliband's leadership as a positive or a negative.
The top three positive factors were:
Speaking out against News International over phone hacking - 44 percent
Opposition to military intervention in Syria - 44 percent
Attempts to reform the Labour Party’s relationship with trade unions - 34 percent
The top three negative factors were:
The way he comes across on radio and TV - 42 percent
The way he has lead the Labour party overall since 2010 - 37 percent
Standing against his brother David for the party leadership - 30 percent
The Lib Dems, so far as I can tell have had absolubtely no conference boost whatsoever... Not even a favourable outlier...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199129/Higher-energy-bills-inevitable-warns-Climate-Change-Secretary-Ed-Miliband.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24213366
So in the first three years of this government more homes have been built by Local Authorities than during the entire 1997-2010 Labour governments who only managed 6,400 in total.
In the first two years of the Coalition government (stats are not yet available for 2012-13), Housing Association new builds have averaged 32,410. Under the 13 years of Labour misrule, the average was 24,797.
Private Sector new-builds as a proportion of total housing stock sold have been higher in each of the first three years of the Coalition government than in any one year of the 97-10 Labout governments. The Private Sector, under any government, will only build to meet realistic expectations of demand volume and value. Turnover in the residential property market (volume x value) was only 25% of pre crisis peaks in June 2013:
During the boom times of 2007, the Indicator stood at 10,000 properties a day. The flow of properties fell drastically as the financial crisis hit, but recovered to 4,000 per day in 2010.
However, over the last three years, the Indicator has shown a downward trend, with stock levels falling faster than marketing times.
Currently, the Indicator stands at 2,761 properties a day – a turnover 14% lower than in June 2012. [Estate Agent News]
So even though turnover has been running at 28% of 2007 levels, private sector new builds are currently averaging 60% of the 2007 levels.
The justification for Osborne's housing finance interventions are staring you in the face, tim.
Currently the public sector, like the private sector, simply can't build large numbers of houses, because the planning system prevents it. Perhaps Ed intends to change this, we shall see, but I'm not holding my breath.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam
2012/13 was the worst year for English housebuilding completions on record (since 1969). Build for victory! …
Ignorant twaddle from Faisal Islam. He is using the same source as I am - LiveTable209.xls from DCLG - so he should be able to read that the 2012-13 figures are incomplete. There is a provisional estimate only for England and no data yet for Scotland, Wales and NI.
If Miliband made an election promise of 365 days in 75% of years Faisal Islam would claim Labour is"building for victory!"
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 1m
ComRes/ITV: of those who expressed a preference 57% think Ed Balls should be replaced as Shadow Chancellor.
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 3m
ComRes/ITV: of those who expressed a preference 72% Labour would have a better chance without Ed Miliband as Party Leader.
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 5m
ComRes/ITV: of those who expressed a preference 78% think Ed Miliband does not come across as an election winner.
There is a reason there are planning problems and delays because deep down people don't want new houses near them despite what they say in national surveys about the need for more houses.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216913/My-husband-hero-Return-Sarah-Brown-Prime-Minister-gives-make-break-speech.html
I also didn't say people leaving London. I said people moving out of the higher crime areas.
And the people who move out of high crime areas are people with kids and gentrifiers without kids who move in.
Apart from that well done, good points.