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Labour dis-United? – politicalbetting.com
Labour dis-United? – politicalbetting.com
Of all the elections being contested on May 6, one of the easiest to call should have been the Liverpool mayoral race. On both previous occasions, Labour won on first preferences with a lead of at least 30%. Labour holds all four parliamentary seats with majorities of at least 27,000 or 60%. It is not quite one-party territory – a fifth of the council seats are held by other parties or independents – but it’s close enough.
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Crap.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56218952
The government will offer incentives to lenders, bringing back 95% mortgages which have "virtually disappeared" during the pandemic, the Treasury said.
Fine.
It is not restricted to first-time buyers or new-build homes, but there will be a £600,000 limit.
So actually it's not for young people at all, anyone who fancies a new home to rent can use this, this won't solve the problem, it will just drive up prices further.
The Tories do not care about young people owning houses, this policy is a con.
The only way to solve the housing crisis is to ride roughshod over Nimbys, but neither party has had the balls to when in government.
From reading up, I understand it failed to give a reason, so I can understand why the local party is furious.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1365581357821423616
Don't forget Eric Joyce "nutting" a handful of MPs when tired and emotional, led to Edstone accidentally setting in place the dark path that led to Corbyn. The loss of the Mayoral election is unlikely in itself, however the inadvertent ramifications of removal of all female shortlists and other such nonsense could hurt in all sorts of ways hitherto unthought of.
Starmer needs to look at the Unite issue and work out how to get this particular monkey off his back. Unfortunately it is the monkey paying for the next election campaign.
Anyway, off before the Johnson fanclub arrive en- mass.
What could possibly go wrong?
For what it's worth, I completely agree with you, the only way to resolve this problem is to build more houses and to tell NIMBYs to sod off. But this would reduce house prices so the Tories won't do it - Labour will have a tough time selling it but they should think of a way. It's necessary at this point.
If Vodafone wants to build a new phone mast in my garden, go right ahead. New wind turbine outside? All hunky dory.
Where's Nancy Drew when you need her?
Skwawkbox skwawking:
https://skwawkbox.org/2021/02/23/breaking-labour-nw-throws-liverpool-mayoral-selection-into-chaos-by-barring-all-3-candidates-from-contest/
It’s a masterpiece.
From what I read and hear they are endlessly pouring petrol on the tyre heap fire that is the left in the party. Feeding the narrative that the only reason Corbyn isn't PM is because the right and the corporations and the media all conspired to bring down a Good Man. The true enemies of socialism are the liar Starmer and the class traitor Rayner.
So I won't be at all surprised to see at least one of them running as a true Labour independent and splitting the vote. Dunno who we're running but the LibDem has to be a good outside bet - we ran the city for 12 years to 2010.
It seems to me that people are panicking, throwing out the baby with the bathwater over poll ratings, when he's still come back from 26 points behind to be - on average at least - a few points behind. To me this seems like quite good progress, no?
I don't see how he is supposed to push Labour forward during a pandemic, it doesn't seem unique to him in that respect. Even if he is boring.
I would dump Dodds but that won't help right now, he should do that after the pandemic.
Would like to hear your thoughts.
Compared to the Blair years, when their hopes of winning the party leadership must have seemed so much more remote, they will believe that they are within touching distance of regaining control.
That's not to say that there won't be an Independent Left candidate as a result of the selection controversy in Liverpool, but it won't be one that Unite, or Left Labour MPs, risk their place in the Labour Party to support.
What's more likely than any of this happening is, of course, that the levelling up agenda essentially comes to nothing and the Tories attempt to hold/expand their Northern gains on the back of culture wars issues and Labour being really, really crap. As I said downthread, the sole aim of Government housing policy is, and always has been, asset price inflation to the benefit of the already well-off.
Liverpool is never boring.
We should encourage medium density (maybe around 6 stories max) in city and town centres with underground parking instead of sprawling suburbia. We also need better transport links of which HS2 is one.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said the country’s biggest city, Auckland, will be put into a seven-day lockdown from Sunday after a [yes, only one] coronavirus community case of unknown origin was recorded.
The rest of New Zealand will be put into level 2 restrictions that limit public gatherings, among others, she told a news conference.
In mid-February, Auckland’s nearly 2 million residents were plunged into a snap three-day lockdown after a family of three were diagnosed with the more transmissible UK variant of Covid-19.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/27/new-zealand-auckland-to-go-into-seven-day-covid-lockdown
I agree the housing market is messed up but I know someone who worked in a very senior role in a housebuilder and he advocated a land value tax - why should a farmer who is mates with the local planning committee suddenly become a multi millionaire because his farmland becomes vastly more valuable due to planning permission.
The other thing that struck me was that in order to get planning approval it could take years and years.
Finally there should be some volume target incentives for builders, even if that means partnership with housing associations. Why do new housing estates skew towards bigger houses - because it is more profitable for a housebuilder. If we can get uptake on some high volume system builds then that could revolutionise supply and open up property market to the young.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/zedpods-st-george-bristol-plans-3387124.amp
https://twitter.com/robertkwolek/status/1355615420070424588?s=21
https://twitter.com/createstreets/status/1202470112562954240?s=21
https://twitter.com/bswud/status/1362737799980441600?s=21
Both parties are badly set up for these debates. Labour are suffering badly already. After the implications of lockdown play out and the ad revenues to the media dry up, the tories will really start to suffer too.
I predict May will be a very unpleasant surprise for both.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9304783/Dominic-Cummings-sets-new-tech-consultancy-firm.html
The fact that several million of them are presently worthless and at constant risk of bursting into flames and visiting an agonizing death upon their occupants doesn't really help.
If he had an atom of sense he’d have said up an advertising agency.
However there is house building at scale in this country at present. Take my city - Newcastle. Every single little bit of green field and brown field is pretty much being filled in, right up to the boundaries of Newcastle and in North and South Tyneside.
It is sprawling suburban housing estates though.
Everyone hates sprawling suburbia but they also want a detached house with a big garden but with excellent transport links to a major city.
I think people would be open to flats more if they were built with dedicated secure underground parking, they were good quality, they were beautiful, they were not huge tower blocks, they had good sound insulation, they were spacious, and they were not at danger of engulfing in flames...
It was clearly worth it on the Johnson-Cnservvative balance sheet.....
But anyone moving up the ladder, or anyone who has previously bought a home, sold it and now wants to get back on the ladder ... why should they be excluded?
Public spending in the north-east is already 60-70% of GDP. How much more do they want before they acknowledge that some areas of the country simply aren't viable at current levels of population, and just act as a drag on the more dynamic ones?
I swapped for a detached house with a garden.
I am not always convinced it was a trade up.
Without that Tier 4 would have held.
The long term answer is the same as it always has been. Abolish NIMBYism. Let whoever owns the land build whatever they want to on that land, subject to preset building standards.
Let a free market build houses people want to buy - and if you don't want people to build on that field near your house then buy the field yourself, or it isn't yours so you have no right to decide what is done on it.
Unfortunately no party has the balls to do the right thing - and I condemn my own for that too.
In Britain, for historical reasons, blocks are associated with slums or, more recently, ridiculous City apartments for billionaires. If the Government tweaked planning law to encourage high-density and councils required good standards, that image would change and the chronic shortage of housing would go away. And relieve the pressure on houses with gardens for people who DO want them.
I would also try and think about what policy areas will differentiate from Tories at a future election and be pushing them now for a start.
Secondly, the EU average is hiding multiple countries, like Spain, Italy and Belgium, which have comparable figures to the UK; for the second wave, France and Germany are also comparable. Some are worse, like Chechia, but I don't think the UK wants or needs that comparison.
Thirdly, some of the figures are, to put it mildly, bollocks. For long periods Spain has had a mysterious pneumonia pandemic, not reported as COVID (https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-11-27/excess-deaths-in-spains-second-wave-23000-since-july.html). Bulgaria has 10,000 COVID deaths but another 8,000 excess deahts. Even the Czech figures, bad though they are, are also well below excess deaths.
This is putting aside the point, that, as we stand, the trend is looking much better for the UK than France.
The UK is playing, sadly, in the Premier League of most affected Western countries. But this idea that we have clinched the title with 18 games to go makes a mockery of proper data journalism.
You don’t see influencers taking photos in front of 4 bed semis on the edge of town.
Shoeboxes make money, and they sell because people are desperate not to be stuck renting forever. We know where that leads in this country: if you're still private renting when you get old then you have to accept a retirement of extreme poverty or work until you drop dead of exhaustion.
My own one-bed flat, built circa 2000, is a rabbit hutch compared to some of the better Sixties examples, but it's still liveable. Comparable flats being built round here immediately before the Plague struck were fully one-third smaller than mine and selling for a higher price. And it's only going to get worse.
Pretty much the entire western world, including the EU and the UK aimed for or had a relaxation over Christmas. That is not the difference between the UK and the EU in that chart. The difference as you said is Kent Covid. Without that Tier 3 let alone Tier 4 was holding. The Northwest was seeing declining cases even in Tier 3 until Kent Covid arrived.
However, over the past few terms there's been a change; said chap or chapess sits in their study, or a WEA office and talks to a screen. Same subjects, but the audience is nationwide. And lots of us like the opportunity it creates. The course I'm doing a the moment was, in a straw poll of the 20 or so present, split half and half as to whether we preferred one or the other form, and several people I know will mix and match depending on what's on offer.
Same applies to the u3a. Before the pandemic we were organised in very local groups, with the subjects 'studied' being dependent on the interest of the members. If you couldn't get someone else to 'do' German conversation, as example, that was that.
Now I still belong to and 'attend' local meetings but I also participate in groups which have national and indeed international membership.
We have the technology. It's similar to the coming of the railway, or mass ownership of cars. People began to travel much more.
Scotland seems to be on a differing scale leader of the country against ex leader.
The excitement and positivity in South Northumberland following the announcement of the BritishVolt factory is very real.
I think even NIMBYs are happy with development if they feel they will benefit generally – rather than just houses and nothing else.
Every new house build is more revenue for the local Council, put it into infrastructure if its needed.
Perhaps have a tax on new builds that can be spent on building the infrastructure required. While shops etc will be built because companies will want a premise near the homes so they will build what is required.
Simply doing nothing isn't a solution.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
So, we put up with the flat and wait until we either retire (and are thus no longer chained to an over-expensive area by work) or our savings have accumulated to the point at which we could afford to trade up paying cash. Apart from security, another advantage of being mortgage free - especially during the pandemic, where there's really not anything much left to spend the money on - is shovelling cash into savings and investments. The Rook household are not exactly plutocrats, but we're determined never to be poor if we can possibly help it.
Personally, I've no special urge to spend 20 years' rent on buying a place so I'm free of rent when I'm 91. I suppose my landlady could be called a buy-to-rent operator, but that's fine - when the boiler went she replaced it within days, happy to let her worry about that sort of thing.
Basically we're all different and should encourage development to cope with that.
https://twitter.com/scottishlabour/status/1365618271202992134?s=20