The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
More than 20 years ago I had a really bad car crash, lucky not to die. It happened in part because I was driving too fast and was too stressed at the time. In hospital over Christmas and New Year I decided that this wasn't going to happen again. For the first next few months I tried to remember this. By June, however, things were back to exactly the same way.
So it will be with London. By the end of this year it will be like Covid never happened.
I think that is exactly right.
London is a great city. Sure, sometimes there is too much attention paid to it by the media, but I lived there for a while and loved every minute of it. I still love the visits. I've been twice since Covid - and even with the restrictions loved it - I'll be back to going 4-5 times a month by the summer, I expect.
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
It would hit a lot of elderly, asset-rich and cash poor in London certainly very hard.
Then they can downsize if they want. Supply and demand.
Like the Scottish fishermen who can move into another business if they want, hey? Supply and demand.
If your purpose in posting here is to make the tory party look more attractive than it actually is, you do need to tone down the "fuck anybody who isn't me" vibe.
I am not a London homeowner, in case you were wondering.
That's not my purpose. My purpose is to debate politics, openly and honestly, with other politics nerds. I have no interest in reflecting the party and I don't take the party line, my opinions are my own.
I see no reason why tenants in the Northwest should be compelled by taxation to pay 1% of their properties value in Council Tax while owner occupiers in London can get away with paying just 0.2% of theirs. Do you care to justify it?
I'm not a fan of "progressive" taxation, but what we have now is positively regressive instead. A flat tax is fair, that people have gotten away without paying a flat tax for decades doesn't make introducing a flat tax unfair, it just means people haven't been paying their fair share.
I'm thinking strategically too, or at least I think I am.
I want broader property rights and capitalism defended long-term, and I simply see the current system as unsustainable.
This is a classic conservative case of lead mild reform now or suffer radical change later.
Reason 1 of many why the replacement of Council tax is very unlikely to happen.
It puts safe Tory seats like Bmth West and Bmth East in play. Electoral suicide. Boris simply won't let it happen.
There might be some tinkering around the edges, but an asset tax that includes the principal home of individuals is morally questionable, and electorally disasterous.
What do you think of adding extra council tax bands, Band I and Band J?
I'd rather that govt stop spaffing money up the wall and talk about tax cuts, rather than rises.
Grow the economy, increase the pie. That is the Conservative way.
Tax rises are coming one way or another. The size of the hole we're in is ginormous.
Declinist....
Objective number one for me, as a Conservative, is a stable and content society. This is so the status quo is broadly maintained, and the economy can continue to grow and we can be prosperous long-term.
The generational gap in politics and wealth is vast, and we must address it. This overrides my proclivity for no wealth or land taxes whatsoever in principle. I think the facts have changed.
Young people have very little asset wealth or savings, whilst older people have a huge amount. It's all in assets and property. We need to find a way of more fairly taxing the nation's wealth base, just a tad more, and cutting taxes on income for working people. I'd even revisit going back to child trust accounts so that those without wealthy parents get, say, £10k to help them start out when they hit 18 or 19.
Otherwise, I fear we'll get full-blown socialism one day, and a completely fragmented society.
Your argument in bold is true, on average, but people like you, and me, and MaxPB are probably a few exceptions I can immediately think of - so is it true for Tory voters? I am not so sure.
Many of my generation are already wealthier than their parents in asset terms (whilst at the same time many are not, and I'll grant you the variation seems much bigger than it did for our parents) - but often stretched. They also have far, far greater outgoings.
Those who are stretched will often have worked hard, foregone luxuries, to secure a home. Any party that screws homeowners as a pure function of the value of their home, more of which is likely to be mortgaged amongst younger voters, is not going to be a party that forms the government.
I understand where you're coming from, but think the key is going to be the tax recoup from boomer estates. By simply failing to increase the threshold on IHT the govt are going to clean up through fiscal drag.
Homeowners won't be screwed, they will just have a small percentage attached. If it was a large percentage then fair enough, but we're talking a very small percentage.
Homeowners here can pay 0.8% to 1% currently but you find it unthinkable that 0.48% could be found in the future elsewhere? Why?
How many times do I need to make this point? Because people's capacity to pay is not a function of the value of their property. Its fine and dandy talking in abstract economic terms in %, but not when it would fundamentally upturn the apple cart of our current economic settlement.
I don't get generate profits from my business as a % of the value of property. Nor to those who get paid PAYE get paid as a % of their property value. And this is before we get into the logistics of valuation, which are often the downfall of socialist asset taxation.
Introducing this policy would lead to immediate recession (if not depression), a house price collapse and a Labour government. Well done for implementing the triple whammy of things you don't want to do immediately after a pandemic which has screwed government finances....
Ballpark a 0.5% annual tax will result in a 10-15% fall in house prices.
This will be offset by elimination of stamp duty but it only gets up to that for the richest (paying 12%)
Ergo the rich benefit from this tax change 🤔
So anyone saving up to buy a house no longer needs to pay Council Tax, doesn't pay SDLT and needs a 10% smaller deposit? Sounds like a win/win/win. That sounds too good to be true.
Until a Labour government come in and put personal taxes up too. And the economy crashes so you don't have a job.
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
You could argue it's not fair how people who happen to live in London have experienced such a big bonus in terms of the value of their property over the last 40 years or so compared to elsewhere in the UK.
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
You could argue it's not fair how people who happen to live in London have experienced such a big bonus in terms of the value of their property over the last 40 years or so compared to elsewhere in the UK.
I have to live in my house, how do I profit from something going up in paper value terms?
you move house or suck it up
Maybe move to Ayrshire where the property is cheaper but you may encounter some odd, unfriendly people!
I resemble that remark!
Although to be fair it was aimed at another poster who lives in the area
Fabada Asturiana, to my own slightly modified recipie, with a glass of cider.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
The problem is that those private landlords are not all the same either in the services they are providing or the way in which they behave.
For example, would you say that a landlord providing long term rented accommodation to someone as their main home should be treated in the same way for taxation purposes as one who is renting to students in a university town on what can only ever be a short term basis? It seems to me that the most likely result of increasing taxes on the latter sector would be to reduce the available amount of rented accommodation for students and so drive up costs. I have to say this is in my mind at the moment as, unlike when I was at university living in places that should have been condemned, I have been extremely impressed with the landlord of my daughters property.
I am trying to remember the name of the lady who used to own pretty much all of the rentable accommodation in St Andrews.
I wonder what happened to her property empire - she was pretty old, and that was 20 years ago...
No help from here. I have the vaguest memory of such a lady existing, but St. Andrews in the 90s was still a place where many of the less assured of us could go through our time with barely a brush with private sector renting.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
The third paragraph is the killer. We aren't going to admit that the milk was deliberately poured down the drain. Sunak can be ordered to go after red tape, because Tory governments remove red tape. Of course the red tape that needs to be cut can't be cut, so instead they will cut workers protections and safety.
As for London, it is a global city, It will be fine. Its the smaller cities they need to be worrying about. But they won't be.
People are really in denial. I suppose everyone is fed up with Brexit. But now is the critical moment. We risk losing a big chunk of our prosperity and livelihoods. We should be trying to salvage what we can. In particular the government should be doing that. It has some agency.
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
It would hit a lot of elderly, asset-rich and cash poor in London certainly very hard.
Then they can downsize if they want. Supply and demand.
Like the Scottish fishermen who can move into another business if they want, hey? Supply and demand.
If your purpose in posting here is to make the tory party look more attractive than it actually is, you do need to tone down the "fuck anybody who isn't me" vibe.
I am not a London homeowner, in case you were wondering.
That's not my purpose. My purpose is to debate politics, openly and honestly, with other politics nerds. I have no interest in reflecting the party and I don't take the party line, my opinions are my own.
I see no reason why tenants in the Northwest should be compelled by taxation to pay 1% of their properties value in Council Tax while owner occupiers in London can get away with paying just 0.2% of theirs. Do you care to justify it?
I'm not a fan of "progressive" taxation, but what we have now is positively regressive instead. A flat tax is fair, that people have gotten away without paying a flat tax for decades doesn't make introducing a flat tax unfair, it just means people haven't been paying their fair share.
I'm thinking strategically too, or at least I think I am.
I want broader property rights and capitalism defended long-term, and I simply see the current system as unsustainable.
This is a classic conservative case of lead mild reform now or suffer radical change later.
Reason 1 of many why the replacement of Council tax is very unlikely to happen.
It puts safe Tory seats like Bmth West and Bmth East in play. Electoral suicide. Boris simply won't let it happen.
There might be some tinkering around the edges, but an asset tax that includes the principal home of individuals is morally questionable, and electorally disasterous.
What do you think of adding extra council tax bands, Band I and Band J?
I'd rather that govt stop spaffing money up the wall and talk about tax cuts, rather than rises.
Grow the economy, increase the pie. That is the Conservative way.
Tax rises are coming one way or another. The size of the hole we're in is ginormous.
Declinist....
Objective number one for me, as a Conservative, is a stable and content society. This is so the status quo is broadly maintained, and the economy can continue to grow and we can be prosperous long-term.
The generational gap in politics and wealth is vast, and we must address it. This overrides my proclivity for no wealth or land taxes whatsoever in principle. I think the facts have changed.
Young people have very little asset wealth or savings, whilst older people have a huge amount. It's all in assets and property. We need to find a way of more fairly taxing the nation's wealth base, just a tad more, and cutting taxes on income for working people. I'd even revisit going back to child trust accounts so that those without wealthy parents get, say, £10k to help them start out when they hit 18 or 19.
Otherwise, I fear we'll get full-blown socialism one day, and a completely fragmented society.
Your argument in bold is true, on average, but people like you, and me, and MaxPB are probably a few exceptions I can immediately think of - so is it true for Tory voters? I am not so sure.
Many of my generation are already wealthier than their parents in asset terms (whilst at the same time many are not, and I'll grant you the variation seems much bigger than it did for our parents) - but often stretched. They also have far, far greater outgoings.
Those who are stretched will often have worked hard, foregone luxuries, to secure a home. Any party that screws homeowners as a pure function of the value of their home, more of which is likely to be mortgaged amongst younger voters, is not going to be a party that forms the government.
I understand where you're coming from, but think the key is going to be the tax recoup from boomer estates. By simply failing to increase the threshold on IHT the govt are going to clean up through fiscal drag.
Homeowners won't be screwed, they will just have a small percentage attached. If it was a large percentage then fair enough, but we're talking a very small percentage.
Homeowners here can pay 0.8% to 1% currently but you find it unthinkable that 0.48% could be found in the future elsewhere? Why?
How many times do I need to make this point? Because people's capacity to pay is not a function of the value of their property. Its fine and dandy talking in abstract economic terms in %, but not when it would fundamentally upturn the apple cart of our current economic settlement.
I don't get generate profits from my business as a % of the value of property. Nor to those who get paid PAYE get paid as a % of their property value. And this is before we get into the logistics of valuation, which are often the downfall of socialist asset taxation.
Introducing this policy would lead to immediate recession (if not depression), a house price collapse and a Labour government. Well done for implementing the triple whammy of things you don't want to do immediately after a pandemic which has screwed government finances....
Ballpark a 0.5% annual tax will result in a 10-15% fall in house prices.
This will be offset by elimination of stamp duty but it only gets up to that for the richest (paying 12%)
Ergo the rich benefit from this tax change 🤔
So anyone saving up to buy a house no longer needs to pay Council Tax, doesn't pay SDLT and needs a 10% smaller deposit? Sounds like a win/win/win. That sounds too good to be true.
Until a Labour government come in and put personal taxes up too. And the economy crashes so you don't have a job.
That's an argument against voting Labour, not an argument against a sensible clean pro market tax reform.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Fact is, we're almost mid-term in the midst of an utterly dire pandemic and days into full Brexit and Labour are barely ahead of the tories.
The tories will win a thumping majority next election.
Not at all. The pandemic is likely to still be helping the Tories by keeping normal party politics at bay - as happened in wartime. Mid-term still lies ahead - as does the likely pain of recession. As it is, Labour under Starmer is performing better than under Kinnock in mid- 1988 or under Gaitskell at the end of 1960 - ie the same points of the 1987 and 1959 Parliaments respectively.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
One Tory strategist I know is off the belief the moment young people start becoming Tories is the moment they become homeowners.
Don't mess with their homes.
It's definitely true, I've seen it happen among loads of my friends. They all talked fluent lefty for years voted for Chaos with Ed in 2015, flirted with Jez in 2017 but in 2019 when the chips were down they all voted for Boris because, and I can quote one of them "he won't hound me out of my home with taxes". What the government should be doing is attacking the private rental sector with large capital taxes to force landlords to sell existing property, Osborne made a really good start on that, Rishi is flunking it at the moment by burdening owner occupiers with a tax that will inevitable rise over time as it will be seen as an easy source of cash by future governments.
TBF you don’t know if the story was leaked by an enemy of Rishi, a friend of Rishi or someone with an axe to grind. My guess is it is a standard paper prepared by the civil service every budget time leaked for reasons unknown
Solution to raising more tax is to cut inheritance tax to 6%, the same as the ten yearly charge for trusts, but include land and businesses. Landowners and business owners can afford to borrow 6% once every generation. Lots of votes from the people saving 34% on their inheritance as well.
Inheritance tax is so avoidable and raises so little - and what it raises is often extraordinarily unfair - that it would be much better to replace it with a lowish flat rate unavoidable, no exemptions, tax with a reasonably modest threshold. At the moment it makes more money for lawyers and accountants than it does for the exchequer.
I'm just dealing with IHT, and I don't currently feel it raises very little .
Bloody expensive, in fact.
Yes, we swerved a good deal - but there's still plenty left.
My father left most of his estate to my mother. Zero inheritance tax to pay (although he wasn’t particularly wealthy when he died).
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
It would hit a lot of elderly, asset-rich and cash poor in London certainly very hard.
Then they can downsize if they want. Supply and demand.
Like the Scottish fishermen who can move into another business if they want, hey? Supply and demand.
If your purpose in posting here is to make the tory party look more attractive than it actually is, you do need to tone down the "fuck anybody who isn't me" vibe.
I am not a London homeowner, in case you were wondering.
That's not my purpose. My purpose is to debate politics, openly and honestly, with other politics nerds. I have no interest in reflecting the party and I don't take the party line, my opinions are my own.
I see no reason why tenants in the Northwest should be compelled by taxation to pay 1% of their properties value in Council Tax while owner occupiers in London can get away with paying just 0.2% of theirs. Do you care to justify it?
I'm not a fan of "progressive" taxation, but what we have now is positively regressive instead. A flat tax is fair, that people have gotten away without paying a flat tax for decades doesn't make introducing a flat tax unfair, it just means people haven't been paying their fair share.
I'm thinking strategically too, or at least I think I am.
I want broader property rights and capitalism defended long-term, and I simply see the current system as unsustainable.
This is a classic conservative case of lead mild reform now or suffer radical change later.
Reason 1 of many why the replacement of Council tax is very unlikely to happen.
It puts safe Tory seats like Bmth West and Bmth East in play. Electoral suicide. Boris simply won't let it happen.
There might be some tinkering around the edges, but an asset tax that includes the principal home of individuals is morally questionable, and electorally disasterous.
What do you think of adding extra council tax bands, Band I and Band J?
I'd rather that govt stop spaffing money up the wall and talk about tax cuts, rather than rises.
Grow the economy, increase the pie. That is the Conservative way.
Tax rises are coming one way or another. The size of the hole we're in is ginormous.
Declinist....
Objective number one for me, as a Conservative, is a stable and content society. This is so the status quo is broadly maintained, and the economy can continue to grow and we can be prosperous long-term.
The generational gap in politics and wealth is vast, and we must address it. This overrides my proclivity for no wealth or land taxes whatsoever in principle. I think the facts have changed.
Young people have very little asset wealth or savings, whilst older people have a huge amount. It's all in assets and property. We need to find a way of more fairly taxing the nation's wealth base, just a tad more, and cutting taxes on income for working people. I'd even revisit going back to child trust accounts so that those without wealthy parents get, say, £10k to help them start out when they hit 18 or 19.
Otherwise, I fear we'll get full-blown socialism one day, and a completely fragmented society.
Your argument in bold is true, on average, but people like you, and me, and MaxPB are probably a few exceptions I can immediately think of - so is it true for Tory voters? I am not so sure.
Many of my generation are already wealthier than their parents in asset terms (whilst at the same time many are not, and I'll grant you the variation seems much bigger than it did for our parents) - but often stretched. They also have far, far greater outgoings.
Those who are stretched will often have worked hard, foregone luxuries, to secure a home. Any party that screws homeowners as a pure function of the value of their home, more of which is likely to be mortgaged amongst younger voters, is not going to be a party that forms the government.
I understand where you're coming from, but think the key is going to be the tax recoup from boomer estates. By simply failing to increase the threshold on IHT the govt are going to clean up through fiscal drag.
Homeowners won't be screwed, they will just have a small percentage attached. If it was a large percentage then fair enough, but we're talking a very small percentage.
Homeowners here can pay 0.8% to 1% currently but you find it unthinkable that 0.48% could be found in the future elsewhere? Why?
How many times do I need to make this point? Because people's capacity to pay is not a function of the value of their property. Its fine and dandy talking in abstract economic terms in %, but not when it would fundamentally upturn the apple cart of our current economic settlement.
I don't get generate profits from my business as a % of the value of property. Nor to those who get paid PAYE get paid as a % of their property value. And this is before we get into the logistics of valuation, which are often the downfall of socialist asset taxation.
Introducing this policy would lead to immediate recession (if not depression), a house price collapse and a Labour government. Well done for implementing the triple whammy of things you don't want to do immediately after a pandemic which has screwed government finances....
(1)But people have to pay their rent or their mortgage as a percentage.
(2)Why would it lead to a recession? And if it led to a house price collapse then that would mean tax cuts for everyone!
1) When people take on a rental or a mortgage they know what the costs are going to be (albeit with some mild fluctuation due to interests rates, something never experienced by an increasing number of homeowners). So fundamentally changing the basis of charges on where people live on a governmental whim like this would be immoral. And any govt introducing it would rightfully be turfed out.
2) a)Reducing the amount of spending money that people expect to have will lead to a reduction in spending. b) The house price crash combined with huge tax hikes will lead to associated foreclosures and bankruptcies.
(1) I think above everyone supporting this agreed it should have a lead time to introduce it. But taxes do change.
(2) It would be revenue neutral. So people gaining money from not being overtaxed as much would increase spending, wouldn't that bring about economic growth?
Plus if existing owner occupiers choose to downsize then they can do so without stamp duty. They would be massive winners.
Err, SDLT is paid by buyers. Downsizers already benefit
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
It would hit a lot of elderly, asset-rich and cash poor in London certainly very hard.
Then they can downsize if they want. Supply and demand.
Like the Scottish fishermen who can move into another business if they want, hey? Supply and demand.
If your purpose in posting here is to make the tory party look more attractive than it actually is, you do need to tone down the "fuck anybody who isn't me" vibe.
I am not a London homeowner, in case you were wondering.
That's not my purpose. My purpose is to debate politics, openly and honestly, with other politics nerds. I have no interest in reflecting the party and I don't take the party line, my opinions are my own.
I see no reason why tenants in the Northwest should be compelled by taxation to pay 1% of their properties value in Council Tax while owner occupiers in London can get away with paying just 0.2% of theirs. Do you care to justify it?
I'm not a fan of "progressive" taxation, but what we have now is positively regressive instead. A flat tax is fair, that people have gotten away without paying a flat tax for decades doesn't make introducing a flat tax unfair, it just means people haven't been paying their fair share.
I'm thinking strategically too, or at least I think I am.
I want broader property rights and capitalism defended long-term, and I simply see the current system as unsustainable.
This is a classic conservative case of lead mild reform now or suffer radical change later.
Reason 1 of many why the replacement of Council tax is very unlikely to happen.
It puts safe Tory seats like Bmth West and Bmth East in play. Electoral suicide. Boris simply won't let it happen.
There might be some tinkering around the edges, but an asset tax that includes the principal home of individuals is morally questionable, and electorally disasterous.
The losers will certainly be far more unhappy than the winners are happy. Close to an iron rule of politics.
Not having to pay Council Tax could certainly be very popular up here. It is the right thing to do, to make the policy fair and flat for all, and if the Tories don't do it then Labour certainly could offer it at the next election and sweep back to win back the North with policies like that.
You've literally lost the 2024 election for the Tories. Attacking owner occupancy is electoral suicide. I doubt Labour would do it either, I expect them to go after holiday homes and second homes.
Not attacking owner occupancy, just making it fair and flat rather than regressive as it is at the minute.
If people stop following NIMBY policies trying to artificially inflate their house prices to make a paper profit but a very real loss for those trying to get on the ladder, because doing so results in a tax rise, then so much the better. Good and fair for everyone then.
I don't want to defend property prices, nothing would make me happier than to see them fall as someone who is trying to buy a house right now.
What I'm saying is that I have already paid ca. 40% tax on the income to buy said property and it generates zero return, in fact it will end up being a money black hole which generates VAT and income tax for construction.
I'm all for taxing property, but only property which either sits empty (second homes, holiday homes) or is generating a return (rental property) and making that 2-3% per year.
Taxing something that it is inherently impossible to generate a return from is morally wrong. I have bought my flat to live in, not because I want to stare at the value.
This is entirely correct and is in line with my view that we should not put additional taxes on the home you live in (with the exception that we should consider more council tax bands at the top end). However I strongly support proper tax on investment/second property which is primarily held for investment - 3% capital value per year sounds reasonable.
Congratulations you just hit the poorer people in even harder. As a renter I know that investment tax is getting passed on to me in my rent and under your scheme I will also pay council tax for the home I live in. Talk about the double whammy
The policy would reduce property prices so hopefully then you could aspire to buy...
Well paying extra will sure help me to save up that deposit and prices would need to drop by 50%. Don't see that as likely somehow do you
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
This is why it would be healthy for the country to have a property tax. More houses get built lowering your house value? Here, have a tax cut.
Want to confine building levels to artificially inflate house prices? You'll pay for that in higher taxes.
Restricting housebuilding supplies has an externality that it is entirely right to tax.
My sister who works as a school secretary has succumbed to Covid (positive lateral flow test in followed by a positive PCR). Sister now has to submit a list of recent contacts. The headteacher, who was in regular contact with my sister during Thursday and Friday, is pleading with my sister not to list her as a contact, on the grounds that she is needed to oversee the school's testing in the week ahead. The Head will know that my sister listed her; hence my sister fears the consequences of doing so.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Part of the problem is that the opponents of any development all live in the same place (near the proposed development), whereas the people who would benefit from it are diffused all over the place. The electoral dynamics mean that it's a kamikaze move for a councillor or MP to support any substantial development in their patch.
Hence the attempts to force housing targets on areas by Prescott and Cummings Jenrick. And also the shooting down of those attempts.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
He's the brightest Labour leader ever.
Not as bright as Wilson - or Gaitskell.
Or Blair. Or Atlee.
Attlee and Blair were not as bright in strict academic terms.
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
It would hit a lot of elderly, asset-rich and cash poor in London certainly very hard.
Then they can downsize if they want. Supply and demand.
Like the Scottish fishermen who can move into another business if they want, hey? Supply and demand.
If your purpose in posting here is to make the tory party look more attractive than it actually is, you do need to tone down the "fuck anybody who isn't me" vibe.
I am not a London homeowner, in case you were wondering.
That's not my purpose. My purpose is to debate politics, openly and honestly, with other politics nerds. I have no interest in reflecting the party and I don't take the party line, my opinions are my own.
I see no reason why tenants in the Northwest should be compelled by taxation to pay 1% of their properties value in Council Tax while owner occupiers in London can get away with paying just 0.2% of theirs. Do you care to justify it?
I'm not a fan of "progressive" taxation, but what we have now is positively regressive instead. A flat tax is fair, that people have gotten away without paying a flat tax for decades doesn't make introducing a flat tax unfair, it just means people haven't been paying their fair share.
I'm thinking strategically too, or at least I think I am.
I want broader property rights and capitalism defended long-term, and I simply see the current system as unsustainable.
This is a classic conservative case of lead mild reform now or suffer radical change later.
Reason 1 of many why the replacement of Council tax is very unlikely to happen.
It puts safe Tory seats like Bmth West and Bmth East in play. Electoral suicide. Boris simply won't let it happen.
There might be some tinkering around the edges, but an asset tax that includes the principal home of individuals is morally questionable, and electorally disasterous.
What do you think of adding extra council tax bands, Band I and Band J?
I'd rather that govt stop spaffing money up the wall and talk about tax cuts, rather than rises.
Grow the economy, increase the pie. That is the Conservative way.
Tax rises are coming one way or another. The size of the hole we're in is ginormous.
Declinist....
Objective number one for me, as a Conservative, is a stable and content society. This is so the status quo is broadly maintained, and the economy can continue to grow and we can be prosperous long-term.
The generational gap in politics and wealth is vast, and we must address it. This overrides my proclivity for no wealth or land taxes whatsoever in principle. I think the facts have changed.
Young people have very little asset wealth or savings, whilst older people have a huge amount. It's all in assets and property. We need to find a way of more fairly taxing the nation's wealth base, just a tad more, and cutting taxes on income for working people. I'd even revisit going back to child trust accounts so that those without wealthy parents get, say, £10k to help them start out when they hit 18 or 19.
Otherwise, I fear we'll get full-blown socialism one day, and a completely fragmented society.
Your argument in bold is true, on average, but people like you, and me, and MaxPB are probably a few exceptions I can immediately think of - so is it true for Tory voters? I am not so sure.
Many of my generation are already wealthier than their parents in asset terms (whilst at the same time many are not, and I'll grant you the variation seems much bigger than it did for our parents) - but often stretched. They also have far, far greater outgoings.
Those who are stretched will often have worked hard, foregone luxuries, to secure a home. Any party that screws homeowners as a pure function of the value of their home, more of which is likely to be mortgaged amongst younger voters, is not going to be a party that forms the government.
I understand where you're coming from, but think the key is going to be the tax recoup from boomer estates. By simply failing to increase the threshold on IHT the govt are going to clean up through fiscal drag.
Homeowners won't be screwed, they will just have a small percentage attached. If it was a large percentage then fair enough, but we're talking a very small percentage.
Homeowners here can pay 0.8% to 1% currently but you find it unthinkable that 0.48% could be found in the future elsewhere? Why?
How many times do I need to make this point? Because people's capacity to pay is not a function of the value of their property. Its fine and dandy talking in abstract economic terms in %, but not when it would fundamentally upturn the apple cart of our current economic settlement.
I don't get generate profits from my business as a % of the value of property. Nor to those who get paid PAYE get paid as a % of their property value. And this is before we get into the logistics of valuation, which are often the downfall of socialist asset taxation.
Introducing this policy would lead to immediate recession (if not depression), a house price collapse and a Labour government. Well done for implementing the triple whammy of things you don't want to do immediately after a pandemic which has screwed government finances....
Ballpark a 0.5% annual tax will result in a 10-15% fall in house prices.
This will be offset by elimination of stamp duty but it only gets up to that for the richest (paying 12%)
Ergo the rich benefit from this tax change 🤔
So anyone saving up to buy a house no longer needs to pay Council Tax, doesn't pay SDLT and needs a 10% smaller deposit? Sounds like a win/win/win. That sounds too good to be true.
It seems there are never any downsides to your Government's policies.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
The problem is that those private landlords are not all the same either in the services they are providing or the way in which they behave.
For example, would you say that a landlord providing long term rented accommodation to someone as their main home should be treated in the same way for taxation purposes as one who is renting to students in a university town on what can only ever be a short term basis? It seems to me that the most likely result of increasing taxes on the latter sector would be to reduce the available amount of rented accommodation for students and so drive up costs. I have to say this is in my mind at the moment as, unlike when I was at university living in places that should have been condemned, I have been extremely impressed with the landlord of my daughters property.
I am trying to remember the name of the lady who used to own pretty much all of the rentable accommodation in St Andrews.
I wonder what happened to her property empire - she was pretty old, and that was 20 years ago...
The fact that he was a murdering bastard doesn't take away from his achievements in music, any more than his achievements in music mitigate the fact that he was a murdering bastard. It's entirely OK to celebrate the music whilst not applauding the murder; it's just a shame some people aren't capable of making the distinction.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
Quite right. A lot of my firm's recent graduates have gone home to their parents for the duration, since they save a tonne of money that way. But once we resume normality, even if they're only required to be in the office 2/3 days a week, they'll still need a place to live in London, and they'll want to be there full time anyway for social reasons.
There's also some migrant workers who've gone back to family abroad who will also need to return, but I suspect that's a much smaller constituency.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
I've just done a rough calculation, my parents bought their house for 18K and would pay that amount in about 15 months under this new property tax.
And we're in the desolate North.
I suspect many in the South would be paying their purchase price within weeks under this new house tax.
well isn't that fair then? had a big property gain and giving some of it back?
Not really, over the last forty years, my parents have spent something like 500k on improving/extending the house, if not more.
Your parents house was bought for 18k and is worth 3 million quid ?!
I wish, last time I was valued it was something like £1.2 million in 2013.
Then the bill would be about 6k in a year, not 14.4k
Ah thanks, still more than we're currently paying in council tax.
The difficulty of this for any government is that no government has gone for changing the valuation for council tax, which is based on 1991(!!) values.
But, it sounds like you wouldn't want them to because it'd almost certainly land you with a larger bill?
Look, I get this, I really do, but I think it's gone too far now. The existing system isn't fair enough.
I want to lower taxes on younger and working people, to boost their economy and their prospects, and I think we need to assess how we do it.
Javid (briefly), Sunak, Osborne and even Hammond (I think) have all considered this in the last 10 years. So it's not a socialist ploy.
I’ve never understood why a council tax revaluation would lead to a rise in council tax? Presumably the same amount would be needed in a given area so, while there might be some rebalancing, it’s unlikely to be massive
My sister who works as a school secretary has succumbed to Covid (positive lateral flow test in followed by a positive PCR). Sister now has to submit a list of recent contacts. The headteacher, who was in regular contact with my sister during Thursday and Friday, is pleading with my sister not to list her as a contact, on the grounds that she is needed to oversee the school's testing in the week ahead. The Head will know that my sister listed her; hence my sister fears the consequences of doing so.
I suspect that I can already hear your answers.
The headteacher has already made a highly inappropriate request of your sister. In principle there should be a escalation process for dealing with this. Maybe there is someone in the school management she trusts she can have a private word with to sort it out, so she doesn't have to escalate?
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
He's the brightest Labour leader ever.
Not as bright as Wilson - or Gaitskell.
Or Blair. Or Atlee.
Possibly brighter than Callaghan although I heard Callaghan explaining what was going on at the time of Black Wednesday and he was spot on. Not as bright as Foot although more grounded in reality. Brighter than Ed? Really not sure about that either. Everyone down to my daughter's cat is brighter than Corbyn of course.
Fact is, we're almost mid-term in the midst of an utterly dire pandemic and days into full Brexit and Labour are barely ahead of the tories.
The tories will win a thumping majority next election.
Not at all. The pandemic is likely to still be helping the Tories by keeping normal party politics at bay - as happened in wartime. Mid-term still lies ahead - as does the likely pain of recession. As it is, Labour under Starmer is performing better than under Kinnock in mid- 1988 or under Gaitskell at the end of 1960 - ie the same points of the 1987 and 1959 Parliaments respectively.
My guess at the moment, this far out would be somewhere between 300-340 Tory seats. While the boundary changes will help, another landslide seems unlikely when the Tories will have been in for 14 years. On the other hand it doesn't feel like Labour are far ahead enough for a big victory either.
According to the Sunday Times the Treasury is investigating scrapping stamp duty and council tax and replacing these with a simple annual tax of 0.48% of a property's value.
That's a tax on Londoners. If they do it the Tory party will lose my vote for a very, very long time.
It would hit a lot of elderly, asset-rich and cash poor in London certainly very hard.
Then they can downsize if they want. Supply and demand.
Like the Scottish fishermen who can move into another business if they want, hey? Supply and demand.
If your purpose in posting here is to make the tory party look more attractive than it actually is, you do need to tone down the "fuck anybody who isn't me" vibe.
I am not a London homeowner, in case you were wondering.
That's not my purpose. My purpose is to debate politics, openly and honestly, with other politics nerds. I have no interest in reflecting the party and I don't take the party line, my opinions are my own.
I see no reason why tenants in the Northwest should be compelled by taxation to pay 1% of their properties value in Council Tax while owner occupiers in London can get away with paying just 0.2% of theirs. Do you care to justify it?
I'm not a fan of "progressive" taxation, but what we have now is positively regressive instead. A flat tax is fair, that people have gotten away without paying a flat tax for decades doesn't make introducing a flat tax unfair, it just means people haven't been paying their fair share.
I'm thinking strategically too, or at least I think I am.
I want broader property rights and capitalism defended long-term, and I simply see the current system as unsustainable.
This is a classic conservative case of lead mild reform now or suffer radical change later.
Reason 1 of many why the replacement of Council tax is very unlikely to happen.
It puts safe Tory seats like Bmth West and Bmth East in play. Electoral suicide. Boris simply won't let it happen.
There might be some tinkering around the edges, but an asset tax that includes the principal home of individuals is morally questionable, and electorally disasterous.
What do you think of adding extra council tax bands, Band I and Band J?
I'd rather that govt stop spaffing money up the wall and talk about tax cuts, rather than rises.
Grow the economy, increase the pie. That is the Conservative way.
Tax rises are coming one way or another. The size of the hole we're in is ginormous.
Declinist....
Objective number one for me, as a Conservative, is a stable and content society. This is so the status quo is broadly maintained, and the economy can continue to grow and we can be prosperous long-term.
The generational gap in politics and wealth is vast, and we must address it. This overrides my proclivity for no wealth or land taxes whatsoever in principle. I think the facts have changed.
Young people have very little asset wealth or savings, whilst older people have a huge amount. It's all in assets and property. We need to find a way of more fairly taxing the nation's wealth base, just a tad more, and cutting taxes on income for working people. I'd even revisit going back to child trust accounts so that those without wealthy parents get, say, £10k to help them start out when they hit 18 or 19.
Otherwise, I fear we'll get full-blown socialism one day, and a completely fragmented society.
Your argument in bold is true, on average, but people like you, and me, and MaxPB are probably a few exceptions I can immediately think of - so is it true for Tory voters? I am not so sure.
Many of my generation are already wealthier than their parents in asset terms (whilst at the same time many are not, and I'll grant you the variation seems much bigger than it did for our parents) - but often stretched. They also have far, far greater outgoings.
Those who are stretched will often have worked hard, foregone luxuries, to secure a home. Any party that screws homeowners as a pure function of the value of their home, more of which is likely to be mortgaged amongst younger voters, is not going to be a party that forms the government.
I understand where you're coming from, but think the key is going to be the tax recoup from boomer estates. By simply failing to increase the threshold on IHT the govt are going to clean up through fiscal drag.
Homeowners won't be screwed, they will just have a small percentage attached. If it was a large percentage then fair enough, but we're talking a very small percentage.
Homeowners here can pay 0.8% to 1% currently but you find it unthinkable that 0.48% could be found in the future elsewhere? Why?
How many times do I need to make this point? Because people's capacity to pay is not a function of the value of their property. Its fine and dandy talking in abstract economic terms in %, but not when it would fundamentally upturn the apple cart of our current economic settlement.
I don't get generate profits from my business as a % of the value of property. Nor to those who get paid PAYE get paid as a % of their property value. And this is before we get into the logistics of valuation, which are often the downfall of socialist asset taxation.
Introducing this policy would lead to immediate recession (if not depression), a house price collapse and a Labour government. Well done for implementing the triple whammy of things you don't want to do immediately after a pandemic which has screwed government finances....
Ballpark a 0.5% annual tax will result in a 10-15% fall in house prices.
This will be offset by elimination of stamp duty but it only gets up to that for the richest (paying 12%)
Ergo the rich benefit from this tax change 🤔
So anyone saving up to buy a house no longer needs to pay Council Tax, doesn't pay SDLT and needs a 10% smaller deposit? Sounds like a win/win/win. That sounds too good to be true.
It seems there are never any downsides to your Government's policies.
Happy days!
In case it didn't come across I'm sceptical that there'd be a 10% price cut in houses, but if there was then it would be a good thing not a bad thing.
This isn't Government policy BTW, though it is one I'd support as described. It is a policy that is being advocated by a campaign group that is being considered by the Government - I highly doubt that this is ever going to see the light of day.
Really good header. Not sure if others have made this point below, but the only thing I'd add is while educated guesses shouldn't become predictions they can be very valuable as forecasts - by which I mean probabilistic estimates. That's the key to good forecasting in a whole range of areas and good gambling in particular.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
There is no hassle and pollution in London now. Seriously
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Part of the problem is that the opponents of any development all live in the same place (near the proposed development), whereas the people who would benefit from it are diffused all over the place. The electoral dynamics mean that it's a kamikaze move for a councillor or MP to support any substantial development in their patch.
Hence the attempts to force housing targets on areas by Prescott and Cummings Jenrick. And also the shooting down of those attempts.
But it’s not really planning, nor local opposition. There are zillions of unimplemented permissions all over the country, as developers sit on land and don’t progress schemes they already have approval for. It’s almost as if they have an interest in keeping property prices high.
We will obviously need to see the detail of Sunak's ideas in due time.
One of the key elements of Council Tax is the extent to which it dominates the income stream for most Councils. Taking Surrey County Council as an example, the 2020-21 Budget had income of £764 million from the Council Tax raised in the districts and boroughs (one of the anomalies of the two-tier local Government structure) which funded spending of around £1 billion.
If you therefore have a Conservative-run authority which is dependent for three quarters of its income on Council Tax you can imagine any substantial changes to Council Tax arrangements are going to be closely scrutinised,
The notion of there being a national "property tax" and a local "property tax" is interesting. The problem with local authority finance is the Government always wants to get involved and always wants to be controlling the purse strings.
At the moment, the Council Tax we pay at Stodge Towers goes to Newham - the notion we'd pay more and most of it would go to central Government to be used to enforce central control over local authorities doesn't sit well with me and it's another example of this Government's inherent centralisation.
The current Government has sought to take power from the EU and Parliament and now seems to want local authorities to be financially emasculated. I also see no mention of Business Rates in all this.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
Supply is overstated as an issue, in any case. Demand for housing arises because it’s an investment, at a time when the return on almost everything other than assets is depressed by QE and zero interest rates. Prices are pushed up by people looking for an income stream and capital gain, not by people looking for somewhere to live; the latter are innocent victims of a broken market. Make property less attractive as an investment and its price will settle at a level those needing somewhere to live can afford.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
There is no hassle and pollution in London now. Seriously
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
All you have to do is confine people to near house arrest and shut most of the stuff they could go to do it.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
There is no hassle and pollution in London now. Seriously
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
Says the man who regularly flees the city the minute there’s a sniff of a lockdown.
Fact is, we're almost mid-term in the midst of an utterly dire pandemic and days into full Brexit and Labour are barely ahead of the tories.
The tories will win a thumping majority next election.
Not at all. The pandemic is likely to still be helping the Tories by keeping normal party politics at bay - as happened in wartime. Mid-term still lies ahead - as does the likely pain of recession. As it is, Labour under Starmer is performing better than under Kinnock in mid- 1988 or under Gaitskell at the end of 1960 - ie the same points of the 1987 and 1959 Parliaments respectively.
My guess at the moment, this far out would be somewhere between 300-340 Tory seats. While the boundary changes will help, another landslide seems unlikely when the Tories will have been in for 14 years. On the other hand it doesn't feel like Labour are far ahead enough for a big victory either.
To repeat - Labour is performing better than at the same stage of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments. Moreover, in 1978 the Tories under Thatcher generally only had low single figure leads - with Labour ahead in October /November.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
There is no hassle and pollution in London now. Seriously
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
All you have to do is confine people to near house arrest and shut most of the stuff they could go to do it.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
I’d agree with the build more houses solution. Something government ought to have been doing for the last half decade, taking advantage of its absurdly low borrowing costs.
Might just have left it too late on that front. We will see.
My sister who works as a school secretary has succumbed to Covid (positive lateral flow test in followed by a positive PCR). Sister now has to submit a list of recent contacts. The headteacher, who was in regular contact with my sister during Thursday and Friday, is pleading with my sister not to list her as a contact, on the grounds that she is needed to oversee the school's testing in the week ahead. The Head will know that my sister listed her; hence my sister fears the consequences of doing so.
I suspect that I can already hear your answers.
The headteacher has already made a highly inappropriate request of your sister. In principle there should be a escalation process for dealing with this. Maybe there is someone in the school management she trusts she can have a private word with to sort it out, so she doesn't have to escalate?
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
There is no hassle and pollution in London now. Seriously
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
All you have to do is confine people to near house arrest and shut most of the stuff they could go to do it.
All I can say is that I'm drinking a fucking excellent Chateau Puech Haut 2018, a robust yet subtle Languedoc red, alongside two purpled breasts of wild mallard, with spiced sesame-and-soy stir fried pak choi, and plenty of wild rice with home made prik nam phla.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
It will bounce back from Covid, like lots of other places. But I suspect it won't be the same as before. People aren't by and large in London because they enjoy it. It's because they have some compelling reason to be there. Those reasons are somewhat fading away.
A lot of the ‘loving London’ was rationalising being there by people who thought they had no choice. Now that firms are allowing people to work remotely, other more attractive and more economic options open up, without all the hassle and noise and pollution that London offers.
There is no hassle and pollution in London now. Seriously
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
Says the man who regularly flees the city the minute there’s a sniff of a lockdown.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
Supply is overstated as an issue, in any case. Demand for housing arises because it’s an investment, at a time when the return on almost everything other than assets is depressed by QE and zero interest rates. Prices are pushed up by people looking for an income stream and capital gain, not by people looking for somewhere to live; the latter are innocent victims of a broken market. Make property less attractive as an investment and its price will settle at a level those needing somewhere to live can afford.
Yes.
Well explained. Hence the logic behind my YIMBY bond. Give the NIMBYs with assets buy-in for council houses within their local area.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
Supply is overstated as an issue, in any case. Demand for housing arises because it’s an investment, at a time when the return on almost everything other than assets is depressed by QE and zero interest rates. Prices are pushed up by people looking for an income stream and capital gain, not by people looking for somewhere to live; the latter are innocent victims of a broken market. Make property less attractive as an investment and its price will settle at a level those needing somewhere to live can afford.
Nope - the population is still increasing faster than we are building bedrooms. They have to sleep somewhere. Hence homes in multiple occupation with bunk beds in every room.
Either
- stop the population increasing - build more houses - enjoy house price inflation
I’ve never understood why a council tax revaluation would lead to a rise in council tax? Presumably the same amount would be needed in a given area so, while there might be some rebalancing, it’s unlikely to be massive
It would depend entirely on where the bands were re-drawn. Based on 1991 valuations as they were, the top Band, Band H, kicked in for all properties over £320,000.
Many have argued for more higher rate bands to take into account the greater range in house prices - if you set the highest band at £500k for example, a house worth £2 million would pay the same. The median (Band D) was set at £160,000 in 1991 - it's now £245,000 so you'd have to adjust the bands accordingly and perhaps create two or three additional bands at the top to pick up the most expensive properties and charge them accordingly.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
Supply is overstated as an issue, in any case. Demand for housing arises because it’s an investment, at a time when the return on almost everything other than assets is depressed by QE and zero interest rates. Prices are pushed up by people looking for an income stream and capital gain, not by people looking for somewhere to live; the latter are innocent victims of a broken market. Make property less attractive as an investment and its price will settle at a level those needing somewhere to live can afford.
Nope - the population is still increasing faster than we are building bedrooms. They have to sleep somewhere. Hence homes in multiple occupation with bunk beds in every room.
Either
- stop the population increasing - build more houses - enjoy house price inflation
Pick one.
1.3m people have just left the UK. Their return is uncertain. The plague may have solved our housing problem - just as the Black Death solved the problem of poor rural wages.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
He's the brightest Labour leader ever.
Not as bright as Wilson - or Gaitskell.
Or Blair. Or Atlee.
Possibly brighter than Callaghan although I heard Callaghan explaining what was going on at the time of Black Wednesday and he was spot on. Not as bright as Foot although more grounded in reality. Brighter than Ed? Really not sure about that either. Everyone down to my daughter's cat is brighter than Corbyn of course.
Callaghan was not very bright though - certainly nowhere near the calibre of Wilson, Healey, Jenkins, Shore, Crosland , Jay or Crossman.He was a very poor party leader who showed disastrous judgement on several crucial issue - particularly re- election timing and his own retirement from the leadership.
The fact that he was a murdering bastard doesn't take away from his achievements in music, any more than his achievements in music mitigate the fact that he was a murdering bastard. It's entirely OK to celebrate the music whilst not applauding the murder; it's just a shame some people aren't capable of making the distinction.
Murderer/record producer Joe Meek got a plaque on his property on Holloway Road that didn't celebrate his murderous tendency. Not sure why the plaque is black..
Can we all agree that the various "Help to buy" schemes are nonsense? Instead of person A buying the house at £X, person B buys the house at £Y. Does nothing to increase housing supply.
I’ve never understood why a council tax revaluation would lead to a rise in council tax? Presumably the same amount would be needed in a given area so, while there might be some rebalancing, it’s unlikely to be massive
The issue is that houses have improved (or deteriorated) to very different degrees - extensions, loft conversions, conservatories etc etc vs normal wear and tear and decline if they're not looked after. What they were worth in 1991 compared to each other. may be a poor guide to current value. So some people will suddenly have vast increases and others will have substantial reductions. If you're a politician, expect to hear more from the former. And that's not merely a cynical observation - if you're near the edge financially, it is much harder to know what to do about a sudden rise in costs than the pleasant task of deciding what to dso with a windfall.
I'd favour substantially increasing the rental sector (the opposite of MaxPB's recommendation) so that buying a house looks less like a necessary lifeboat and more like merely one lifestyle option among others, as it is in most Western countries. Trying to force rental landlords to sell as Max recommends will help people who can nearly afford to buy at the moment, at the expense of people who couldn't dream of it (and don't necessarily even want to).
The fact that he was a murdering bastard doesn't take away from his achievements in music, any more than his achievements in music mitigate the fact that he was a murdering bastard. It's entirely OK to celebrate the music whilst not applauding the murder; it's just a shame some people aren't capable of making the distinction.
Murderer/record producer Joe Meek got a plaque on his property on Holloway Road that didn't celebrate his murderous tendency. Not sure why the plaque is black..
Jeez. That is alarming. And here was I celebrating a day, just one day, without a dystopian Covid news story. And then: voila
VACCINATE EVERYONE NOW. Countries who aren't entirely focused on Vaccination are badly led. The best policy for any country, right now, is to aim for the most people possible Who Never Get The Bug.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
Supply is overstated as an issue, in any case. Demand for housing arises because it’s an investment, at a time when the return on almost everything other than assets is depressed by QE and zero interest rates. Prices are pushed up by people looking for an income stream and capital gain, not by people looking for somewhere to live; the latter are innocent victims of a broken market. Make property less attractive as an investment and its price will settle at a level those needing somewhere to live can afford.
Nope - the population is still increasing faster than we are building bedrooms. They have to sleep somewhere. Hence homes in multiple occupation with bunk beds in every room.
Either
- stop the population increasing - build more houses - enjoy house price inflation
Pick one.
1.3m people have just left the UK. Their return is uncertain. The plague may have solved our housing problem - just as the Black Death solved the problem of poor rural wages.
That is a small dent, which might or might not give us some breathing space - 3-4 years of population inflation.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
He's the brightest Labour leader ever.
Not as bright as Wilson - or Gaitskell.
Or Blair. Or Atlee.
Possibly brighter than Callaghan although I heard Callaghan explaining what was going on at the time of Black Wednesday and he was spot on. Not as bright as Foot although more grounded in reality. Brighter than Ed? Really not sure about that either. Everyone down to my daughter's cat is brighter than Corbyn of course.
Callaghan was not very bright though - certainly nowhere near the calibre of Wilson, Healey, Jenkins, Shore, Crosland , Jay or Crossman.He was a very poor party leader who showed disastrous judgement on several crucial issue - particularly re- election timing and his own retirement from the leadership.
When I was wasting my time at University and everyone used to insist on lecturing me in law which was unbearably tedious one of my light reliefs used to be going around the main library and picking books at random about, well, anything else really. In this way I picked up the Crossman diaries which were a hoot. He was quite convinced that he was an intellectual powerhouse and just didn't get that Wilson was playing him on a string. In those books Callaghan did not come over well.
I’ve never understood why a council tax revaluation would lead to a rise in council tax? Presumably the same amount would be needed in a given area so, while there might be some rebalancing, it’s unlikely to be massive
The issue is that houses have improved (or deteriorated) to very different degrees - extensions, loft conversions, conservatories etc etc vs normal wear and tear and decline if they're not looked after. What they were worth in 1991 compared to each other. may be a poor guide to current value. So some people will suddenly have vast increases and others will have substantial reductions. If you're a politician, expect to hear more from the former. And that's not merely a cynical observation - if you're near the edge financially, it is much harder to know what to do about a sudden rise in costs than the pleasant task of deciding what to dso with a windfall.
I'd favour substantially increasing the rental sector (the opposite of MaxPB's recommendation) so that buying a house looks less like a necessary lifeboat and more like merely one lifestyle option among others, as it is in most Western countries. Trying to force rental landlords to sell as Max recommends will help people who can nearly afford to buy at the moment, at the expense of people who couldn't dream of it (and don't necessarily even want to).
Hello Nick - you replied late last night to a comment I made about lockdown lifting etc on last night's thread, I was in bed by then!
Yes my views have changed on the lockdown, in the autumn I was hopeful that we had it under control and that there wouldn't be a second wave, thus my greater enthusiasm at the time for unlocking.
But I was wrong, clearly we have seen this destructive second wave and I now have a much more cautious view of unlocking from this wave so that when we do, its for good and only once we are reasonably certain the epidemic has been dealt with.
Back to the vaccine - according to my wife (who is in the vulnerable group) - the GP told her that they have run out of over 80s to jab. So they are doing 70s now.
It is quite amusing to see all the people here complaining about the suggested property tax and a lot of them claiming to be left wing suggesting the burden should instead fall on the have nots in our society the renters. Yet mostly coming from people who claim that we have to help those less well off.
Back to the vaccine - according to my wife (who is in the vulnerable group) - the GP told her that they have run out of over 80s to jab. So they are doing 70s now.
You make it sound like they are chasing down oldies with a dart gun....
My sister who works as a school secretary has succumbed to Covid (positive lateral flow test in followed by a positive PCR). Sister now has to submit a list of recent contacts. The headteacher, who was in regular contact with my sister during Thursday and Friday, is pleading with my sister not to list her as a contact, on the grounds that she is needed to oversee the school's testing in the week ahead. The Head will know that my sister listed her; hence my sister fears the consequences of doing so.
I suspect that I can already hear your answers.
The headmistress is risking lives - this is part of the reason why we are all in the mess we are.
Selfish, selfish people like her.
I feel very sorry for your sister, she is in a very difficult position.
Unfortunately, she is not alone I know of other situations including someone who was ordered to work although should have been isolating - the manager said "turn up tomorrow or don't bother coming back"
In other slightly related news a friend of my son contracted covid at work and subsequently his entire family at home caught it.
The (step) father now in an induced coma.
Why would anyone knowingly put other families at risk of that?
Like others I've seen that Rumsfeld quote positively referenced many times. Maybe it was the man and the moment that saw it criticised more than its inherent quality.
The criticism was because of the situation. It was a perfectly sensible enumeration of a basic premise but it was delivered in a manner that made him look like a total dick.
Nope, despite attempts here, that is not the reason it provoked mirth on this side of the pond at least. I recall that at least with perfect clarity, no one was going 'You know, his delivery makes him look like a dick, and he's avoiding the point'. It was that he was an idiot that was mocked, along with the standard Bush mockery around that whole period.
It is quite amusing to see all the people here complaining about the suggested property tax and a lot of them claiming to be left wing suggesting the burden should instead fall on the have nots in our society the renters. Yet mostly coming from people who claim that we have to help those less well off.
Back to the vaccine - according to my wife (who is in the vulnerable group) - the GP told her that they have run out of over 80s to jab. So they are doing 70s now.
Heard the same about an extended family member.
Whereas in my own area a nearby council said a couple of days ago that all 80+ will have had a letter by middle of next week.
As I thought, Carlotta's dubious numbers from earlier were indeed dodgy...........only time she loves Scotland
How exactly does that prove the numbers she posted were dodgy?
She did not have UK at 7th and only used it as it did not split the countries, her hatred of Scotland ensured she could not show them down the park. If they had been highest in UK , she would have ensured she highlighted it big time.
I'm amazed at your resilience in following politics malc, you're always at 11 out of 10 on the intensity scale, I'd find it exhausing.
Back to the vaccine - according to my wife (who is in the vulnerable group) - the GP told her that they have run out of over 80s to jab. So they are doing 70s now.
Heard the same about an extended family member.
Whereas in my own area a nearby council said a couple of days ago that all 80+ will have had a letter by middle of next week.
The government should start naming and shaming slow areas...bit of incentive.
Kier Starmer will take us back into the Customs Union:
(1) His base will love it. (2) He can make an economic case for it. (3) He wants to use it to outflank the Tories on Unionism.
And he's already said as much.
Not a chance.
Labour might, but if they do it won't be Starmer, and the chances of them doing so are very small in the short to medium term.
There's an interview with him the other week where he strongly hinted this, but I can't find it.
Frankly if I were Starmer I would hold back on making any policy substantive announcements until at least 2022, maybe even 2023. Things have changed so fast so quickly that Labour need to see what the post Brexit and post Pandemic landscape looks like an then form proposals accordingly. If the mood shifts to in a more pro Europe direction I don’t think suggesting negotiation of a form of Customs Union with the EU is at all out of the question.
He's the brightest Labour leader ever.
Not as bright as Wilson - or Gaitskell.
Or Blair. Or Atlee.
Possibly brighter than Callaghan although I heard Callaghan explaining what was going on at the time of Black Wednesday and he was spot on. Not as bright as Foot although more grounded in reality. Brighter than Ed? Really not sure about that either. Everyone down to my daughter's cat is brighter than Corbyn of course.
Callaghan was not very bright though - certainly nowhere near the calibre of Wilson, Healey, Jenkins, Shore, Crosland , Jay or Crossman.He was a very poor party leader who showed disastrous judgement on several crucial issue - particularly re- election timing and his own retirement from the leadership.
He was hemmed in by the conditions of the Lib Lab Pact - don´t you remember? They agreed to have a period between the ending of the pact and the calling of the election. Callaghan was a thoroughly decent man, and kept to his word.
The period of the Lib-Lab Pact was in fact a time of very good government. It kept the government of the country going, with nothing too extreme, since its policies had to be approved by the Liberals beforehand - and it had the added benefit of keeping the hoards of baying Thatcherites off for a few more months.
The real problem was that the Callaghan Government was scuppered by the Bennite Socialists and their friends in the trade unions - that was the Winter of Discontent - who were furious that the Labour Government was not as extreme Socialist as they were themselves.
PB.com has forecast 27 of the last zero London collapses.
Lots of high paid jobs are not going back - they all spent money in town which they will not be doing anymore I don't say it will collapse but clearly things will be different
In fairness Corbyn thinks the same thing, essentially, unless you believe his explanation that when he said, ina prepared statement, that claims were exagerrated, he did not mean claims were exagerrated.
The fact that he was a murdering bastard doesn't take away from his achievements in music, any more than his achievements in music mitigate the fact that he was a murdering bastard. It's entirely OK to celebrate the music whilst not applauding the murder; it's just a shame some people aren't capable of making the distinction.
I can make the distinction, it just seems like the headline, not just subtitled and other info, should say something like 'Music producer and murderer, Phil Spector, dead'.
It's not some incidental quirk that needs bringing up but doesn't need to be prominent, it should be right there up front and centre. I don't see how that could be objected to.
I've just done a rough calculation, my parents bought their house for 18K and would pay that amount in about 15 months under this new property tax.
And we're in the desolate North.
I suspect many in the South would be paying their purchase price within weeks under this new house tax.
well isn't that fair then? had a big property gain and giving some of it back?
Not really, over the last forty years, my parents have spent something like 500k on improving/extending the house, if not more.
Your parents house was bought for 18k and is worth 3 million quid ?!
I wish, last time I was valued it was something like £1.2 million in 2013.
Then the bill would be about 6k in a year, not 14.4k
Ah thanks, still more than we're currently paying in council tax.
The difficulty of this for any government is that no government has gone for changing the valuation for council tax, which is based on 1991(!!) values.
But, it sounds like you wouldn't want them to because it'd almost certainly land you with a larger bill?
Look, I get this, I really do, but I think it's gone too far now. The existing system isn't fair enough.
I want to lower taxes on younger and working people, to boost their economy and their prospects, and I think we need to assess how we do it.
Javid (briefly), Sunak, Osborne and even Hammond (I think) have all considered this in the last 10 years. So it's not a socialist ploy.
I’ve never understood why a council tax revaluation would lead to a rise in council tax? Presumably the same amount would be needed in a given area so, while there might be some rebalancing, it’s unlikely to be massive
I think Nigel put his finger on it earlier today when he said the winners would just pocket the difference and shrug but the losers would scream blue murder.
Back to the vaccine - according to my wife (who is in the vulnerable group) - the GP told her that they have run out of over 80s to jab. So they are doing 70s now.
You make it sound like they are chasing down oldies with a dart gun....
Combine it with the Most Dangerous Game, and people could make it part of their daily exercise.
The worst Tory general election campaign in living memory? The one where Theresa May became the house snatcher.
Why was Mrs Thatcher really ousted? Tory MPs had angry constituents that were massively worse off thanks to the changes in the rates when the community charge/poll tax came in and they needed a change, which Mrs T wasn't going to give.
Brief lesson, Tory PMs/Leaders who starts messing with council taxes/property taxes have unhappy endings.
It is, IMO, the strongest motivating factor for Tory inclined voters. Don't fuck with people's homes.
Sometimes, though, you need to do what is right, rather than what is popular.
And don't forget, this will be a boon to the retired, because it enables them (should they wish) to downsize without ending up paying a massive chunk of change in stamp duty.
We have 4.5m homes owned by private landlords in this country, target that property at a higher rate. Taxing primary residences for wealth taxes knowing that they can't be worked for income is morally wrong, regardless of whatever economic or social benefits it might bring.
We need rent controls and to make it less attractive to be a private landlord
The oldest mistake in the book.
Reduce supply whilst demand is continued to be high, and you get a slum situation.
Happened last time.
My focus would be on removing all tax allowances on property loans except for build to rent
If you want to ease the crisis of property prices in part of the UK... build a fuckton of houses.
It's an answer that upsets all kinds of people. It is the only policy that will actually work.
One of the main problems is homeownership is seen as financial security. An asset that only ever - and should only ever - increase in value.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
Nope, just insist houses are built in an area and fine the councils £100,000 for every house they fail to build
The house building rate to reduce house price inflation in the effected area is so insane, compared to what has been going on, that reducing prices by supply is impossible.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
Supply is overstated as an issue, in any case. Demand for housing arises because it’s an investment, at a time when the return on almost everything other than assets is depressed by QE and zero interest rates. Prices are pushed up by people looking for an income stream and capital gain, not by people looking for somewhere to live; the latter are innocent victims of a broken market. Make property less attractive as an investment and its price will settle at a level those needing somewhere to live can afford.
Nope - the population is still increasing faster than we are building bedrooms. They have to sleep somewhere. Hence homes in multiple occupation with bunk beds in every room.
Either
- stop the population increasing - build more houses - enjoy house price inflation
Pick one.
1.3m people have just left the UK. Their return is uncertain. The plague may have solved our housing problem - just as the Black Death solved the problem of poor rural wages.
Only if people are prepared to sleep 3 to a room, instead of the previous 8......
The first is that I paid a simply gargantuan amount of stamp duty when I bought my house three years ago. But Charles’s proposal (essentially a rebate) may deal with that.
The second is that the idea is the central govt scoops most of this up. It is therefore a massive and terrifying siphoning of money from already debilitated and impoverished local authorities into central government.
PB.com has forecast 27 of the last zero London collapses.
Lots of high paid jobs are not going back - they all spent money in town which they will not be doing anymore I don't say it will collapse but clearly things will be different
They will be different, better I think, as we will be able to manage rush hour and have people WFH more often. But if you want to bet that London won’t be successful, well I’d be on the other side of that bet.
I've just done a rough calculation, my parents bought their house for 18K and would pay that amount in about 15 months under this new property tax.
And we're in the desolate North.
I suspect many in the South would be paying their purchase price within weeks under this new house tax.
well isn't that fair then? had a big property gain and giving some of it back?
Not really, over the last forty years, my parents have spent something like 500k on improving/extending the house, if not more.
Your parents house was bought for 18k and is worth 3 million quid ?!
I wish, last time I was valued it was something like £1.2 million in 2013.
Then the bill would be about 6k in a year, not 14.4k
Ah thanks, still more than we're currently paying in council tax.
The difficulty of this for any government is that no government has gone for changing the valuation for council tax, which is based on 1991(!!) values.
But, it sounds like you wouldn't want them to because it'd almost certainly land you with a larger bill?
Look, I get this, I really do, but I think it's gone too far now. The existing system isn't fair enough.
I want to lower taxes on younger and working people, to boost their economy and their prospects, and I think we need to assess how we do it.
Javid (briefly), Sunak, Osborne and even Hammond (I think) have all considered this in the last 10 years. So it's not a socialist ploy.
I’ve never understood why a council tax revaluation would lead to a rise in council tax? Presumably the same amount would be needed in a given area so, while there might be some rebalancing, it’s unlikely to be massive
I think Nigel put his finger on it earlier today when he said the winners would just pocket the difference and shrug but the losers would scream blue murder.
The reason why I think this plan is more than just kite flying is the idea of combining stamp duty into it - someone has thought how do you fix x and then identified that y is also a problem.
Hello Nick - you replied late last night to a comment I made about lockdown lifting etc on last night's thread, I was in bed by then!
Yes my views have changed on the lockdown, in the autumn I was hopeful that we had it under control and that there wouldn't be a second wave, thus my greater enthusiasm at the time for unlocking.
But I was wrong, clearly we have seen this destructive second wave and I now have a much more cautious view of unlocking from this wave so that when we do, its for good and only once we are reasonably certain the epidemic has been dealt with.
I really respect people like you who express a forceful view and then change their minds when new information appears. I find it difficult to do, and so I think do most people, though we all claim to have open minds.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
Hmm. My forecast is London will bounce back.
Because London.
A lot of direr predictions seem to rely on a lot of assumptions of it very quickly becoming essentially a pariah city. Doesn't seem likely to me, but then I'm not a Londoner.
The Brexit situation is bad, worse than people think it is, and likely to get worse again before it gets better. The big known unknown was how much the new barriers to trade would affect imports and exports to and from the European Union As it turns out, they are in a state of collapse, with big shipping companies refusing to deal with the UK until people can get their paperwork sorted out and with lorries stuck all over the place.
There is a degree of "teething troubles" in the sense that people weren't prepared for the Tsunami of red tape. Eventually some, but by no means all, businesses will get on top of the bureaucracy, accept it as a new cost of business, and get on with importing and exporting. Others will give up with consequent losses of business and people's jobs.
There is no point crying over spilt milk - Brexit is done. Equally you can't mop it up unless you acknowledge you spilt it in the first place. The focus now should be on salvaging what we we can of our European business that makes up half our trade. I don't hold out much hope. No-one in politics is in damage limitation mode. Indeed Rishi Sunak is talking about bonfire of red tape, again. He should be trying to make the huge amounts of red tape that he was jointly responsible for burdening business with, kind of work.
London has seen a Covid-related flight to the suburbs. Meanwhile foreigners have gone home and probably won't return in the same numbers as London loses its international importance post-Brexit. Maybe this is OK. London becomes more of another capital city and less of the pre-eminent world city it was before.
The first is that I paid a simply gargantuan amount of stamp duty when I bought my house three years ago. But Charles’s proposal (essentially a rebate) may deal with that.
The second is that the idea is the central govt scoops most of this up. It is therefore a massive and terrifying siphoning of money from already debilitated and impoverished local authorities into central government.
Local authorities are very bad at collecting money - centralising it would make sense
This 0.48 proposal would QUADRUPLE my council tax.
I live in Scotland so not applicable, but it would be better than halved on my band C ex-housing association 3-bed terrace.
You can tell almost immediately where the winners and losers live.
I am always surprised how “provincial” PB is.
We London dwellers are a minority, despite powering the economy that pays for the rest of you to moan all day about Brexit, Scottish sub-samples, pineapple on pizza etc
This 0.48 proposal would QUADRUPLE my council tax.
I think you 'win' - I'd be close to a tripling.
Look on the bright side though: a policy that would make even me question the value of voting Conservative is not all that likely to happen.
Would you change your name to FadedBlue?
I'd go back to blueblue - the name I took the day May dropped her Dementia Tax bombshell and my stomach knotted something awful.
I'd prefer not to have to return to that.
I respected her for that proposal. She was at least trying to address the problem not just say there is a problem that needs a solution. And she must have known it would be unpopular (though not as much as it was) and included it anyway.
Comments
London is a great city. Sure, sometimes there is too much attention paid to it by the media, but I lived there for a while and loved every minute of it. I still love the visits. I've been twice since Covid - and even with the restrictions loved it - I'll be back to going 4-5 times a month by the summer, I expect.
Building a fuckton of houses where they’re needed would solve the housing crisis but result in financial insecurity for the Tory client vote.
It’s an obscene situation where one generation is taxing another generation and no one can do anything about it.
Vaguely linked - My stab at a solution to the housing crisis is to incentivise/bribe the nimbys with a moderately generous inflation-linked ns&i YIMBY bond to fund council housing within the tight postcode area. I think that might just break the current stalemate.
https://twitter.com/lrossouw/status/1350857262982639618?s=19
Want to confine building levels to artificially inflate house prices? You'll pay for that in higher taxes.
Restricting housebuilding supplies has an externality that it is entirely right to tax.
My sister who works as a school secretary has succumbed to Covid (positive lateral flow test in followed by a positive PCR). Sister now has to submit a list of recent contacts. The headteacher, who was in regular contact with my sister during Thursday and Friday, is pleading with my sister not to list her as a contact, on the grounds that she is needed to oversee the school's testing in the week ahead. The Head will know that my sister listed her; hence my sister fears the consequences of doing so.
I suspect that I can already hear your answers.
Hence the attempts to force housing targets on areas by Prescott and Cummings Jenrick. And also the shooting down of those attempts.
Happy days!
There's also some migrant workers who've gone back to family abroad who will also need to return, but I suspect that's a much smaller constituency.
We are in a situation where building an additional 250K houses a year might or might not reduce house price inflation to single digits.
As to incentives - make sure the houses built are of good quality. No one wants to live next to Barrett homes shit. Funny that.
I know the Prince Charles is a Facist Reactionary Neon Nazi Scumbag - but he is right. Build houses for people. The people who want other people to live in "machines for living" can be dealt with thus -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLC8Rrd5ze4
This isn't Government policy BTW, though it is one I'd support as described. It is a policy that is being advocated by a campaign group that is being considered by the Government - I highly doubt that this is ever going to see the light of day.
The city is noticeably quieter, and easier, in terms of parking and traffic. The air is cleaner. The parks are calmer. Roads are pleasantly empty. Public transport is deserted. You can nip in an Uber and cross the town in 20 minutes.
Many more people are cycling.
Ultimately, Covid may point the way towards move liveable great cities. We just have to reframe our perspectives.
We will obviously need to see the detail of Sunak's ideas in due time.
One of the key elements of Council Tax is the extent to which it dominates the income stream for most Councils. Taking Surrey County Council as an example, the 2020-21 Budget had income of £764 million from the Council Tax raised in the districts and boroughs (one of the anomalies of the two-tier local Government structure) which funded spending of around £1 billion.
If you therefore have a Conservative-run authority which is dependent for three quarters of its income on Council Tax you can imagine any substantial changes to Council Tax arrangements are going to be closely scrutinised,
The notion of there being a national "property tax" and a local "property tax" is interesting. The problem with local authority finance is the Government always wants to get involved and always wants to be controlling the purse strings.
At the moment, the Council Tax we pay at Stodge Towers goes to Newham - the notion we'd pay more and most of it would go to central Government to be used to enforce central control over local authorities doesn't sit well with me and it's another example of this Government's inherent centralisation.
The current Government has sought to take power from the EU and Parliament and now seems to want local authorities to be financially emasculated. I also see no mention of Business Rates in all this.
Something government ought to have been doing for the last half decade, taking advantage of its absurdly low borrowing costs.
Might just have left it too late on that front. We will see.
Exquisite.
Well explained. Hence the logic behind my YIMBY bond. Give the NIMBYs with assets buy-in for council houses within their local area.
Either
- stop the population increasing
- build more houses
- enjoy house price inflation
Pick one.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/17/almost-third-recovered-covid-patients-return-hospital-five-months/
Many have argued for more higher rate bands to take into account the greater range in house prices - if you set the highest band at £500k for example, a house worth £2 million would pay the same. The median (Band D) was set at £160,000 in 1991 - it's now £245,000 so you'd have to adjust the bands accordingly and perhaps create two or three additional bands at the top to pick up the most expensive properties and charge them accordingly.
Instead of person A buying the house at £X, person B buys the house at £Y.
Does nothing to increase housing supply.
I'd favour substantially increasing the rental sector (the opposite of MaxPB's recommendation) so that buying a house looks less like a necessary lifeboat and more like merely one lifestyle option among others, as it is in most Western countries. Trying to force rental landlords to sell as Max recommends will help people who can nearly afford to buy at the moment, at the expense of people who couldn't dream of it (and don't necessarily even want to).
VACCINATE EVERYONE NOW. Countries who aren't entirely focused on Vaccination are badly led. The best policy for any country, right now, is to aim for the most people possible Who Never Get The Bug.
Look on the bright side though: a policy that would make even me question the value of voting Conservative is not all that likely to happen.
Kite flying.
Yes my views have changed on the lockdown, in the autumn I was hopeful that we had it under control and that there wouldn't be a second wave, thus my greater enthusiasm at the time for unlocking.
But I was wrong, clearly we have seen this destructive second wave and I now have a much more cautious view of unlocking from this wave so that when we do, its for good and only once we are reasonably certain the epidemic has been dealt with.
Selfish, selfish people like her.
I feel very sorry for your sister, she is in a very difficult position.
Unfortunately, she is not alone I know of other situations including someone who was ordered to work although should have been isolating - the manager said "turn up tomorrow or don't bother coming back"
In other slightly related news a friend of my son contracted covid at work and subsequently his entire family at home caught it.
The (step) father now in an induced coma.
Why would anyone knowingly put other families at risk of that?
Whereas in my own area a nearby council said a couple of days ago that all 80+ will have had a letter by middle of next week.
The period of the Lib-Lab Pact was in fact a time of very good government. It kept the government of the country going, with nothing too extreme, since its policies had to be approved by the Liberals beforehand - and it had the added benefit of keeping the hoards of baying Thatcherites off for a few more months.
The real problem was that the Callaghan Government was scuppered by the Bennite Socialists and their friends in the trade unions - that was the Winter of Discontent - who were furious that the Labour Government was not as extreme Socialist as they were themselves.
It's not some incidental quirk that needs bringing up but doesn't need to be prominent, it should be right there up front and centre. I don't see how that could be objected to.
The first is that I paid a simply gargantuan amount of stamp duty when I bought my house three years ago. But Charles’s proposal (essentially a rebate) may deal with that.
The second is that the idea is the central govt scoops most of this up. It is therefore a massive and terrifying siphoning of money from already debilitated and impoverished local authorities into central government.
I'd prefer not to have to return to that.
We London dwellers are a minority, despite powering the economy that pays for the rest of you to moan all day about Brexit, Scottish sub-samples, pineapple on pizza etc